Red Wattle Pigs-The Perfect Homesteading Hog?
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- čas přidán 29. 09. 2023
- We fulfilled our lifelong dream of raising out a pair of pigs on our farm. We just finished out two red wattle pigs and they were a lot of fun. We got loads of delicious meat, including the best bacon I've ever had.
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Timestamps
0:00: Red Wattles
1:47: Growth Rate
3:10: Forage & Pasture Behavior
5:15: Temperament
6:39: Health & Hardiness
8:00: Taste
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ABOUT THE HIGH MOUNTAIN HOMESTEAD
Hi! I’m PJ, and my family loves the homesteading life! It’s something my wife and I have always wanted to do, but we grew up with ZERO HOMESTEADING EXPERIENCE!!!!!We grew up in beautiful southern California, 15 minutes away from the beach. As amazing as that was, we both dreamed of a life closer to land and animals. After getting married and moving to Utah, our family slowly grew. We had become a family of four living in a townhome with a small backyard filled with potted plants.
In 2019 we dipped out feet into homesteading on 1 ¼ acre lot in Utah. In 18 months we were ready to do this for real. So in 2021 we packed everything up (including our sheep) and moved to North Carolina to 12 acres and we love every inch of our homestead!
We raise sheep and have big plans for:
• grass-fed lamb
• meat chickens
• laying chickens
• heritage breed pork
• honey
• vegetable garden
• perennial food forest
• and more
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#pigs #heritagepork #homesteading
TIP for your next time. To make loading easier, pull your trailer into their enclosure (or at least the back door) a week before butcher day and leave the door open. Depending on height you may need a ramp or steps. Feed them in the trailer. If they are too food aggressive start throwing a treat in the trailer each day. Once they get used to it going in and out wont be a big deal. My trailer has a back and side door, so I only leave the back door accessible in the pen and the side door from outside which is really convenient.
Yes, we need to try this next time! We don't own a trailer so I rented one from a neighbor. I only got it a day in advance. I've heard your word of advice before from others. I'm definitely not going to be cheap next time and will rent the trailer for at least a week... I can see now the extra cost would be worth it in the end. And if you own a trailer, even better!
Good video. We’ve raised berkshires, red wattles, yorkshires, durocs, and crosses. I’ve never really noticed a big difference in flavor between them. What we did notice, was that pigs fed lots of meat scraps from our other butchering (cow, sheep, deer) tasted better than those that were not. Some will disagree with this, but we cook the scraps (excess fat, lungs, liver (we do eat some of the liver), kidneys, silverskin, tendons, etc) before feeding them to the pig, minimizing any risk of disease transmission. The pigs love the scraps, and there is no doubt that they provide a lot of calories and protein to their diet.
Wow, good for you for cooking all scraps! That's interesting and believable that supplementing them with meat provides a better flavor for the pork. Protein has such a rich nutritional profile, I'll bet the pigs felt better while they had access to that as well. Healthier pigs = happier pigs. Thanks for sharing.
Your channel tipped the scale with deciding to raise sheep.
Woohoo! I hope the channel helps in your sheep journey.
Raising pigs has always been last on my list, but more and more I have been considering giving it a shot, short term.
We enjoyed it for sure. Will probably do it again, but we're still swimming in pork products!
I’m going to give them 5/5… bacon strips 😂😂😂
Great video and loved that it wasn’t just a scale out of 5 but out of 5 bacon strips!
Thanks Trent, glad to see you here!
such a fun video! so happy for you. pigs sure do make the place alot more fun. We've done all sorts of pigs. heritage tamworths, duroc, berks, you name it. even getting a yorkshire/duroc cross will give you the awesome marbling and fast growth rates. 200 pounds per pig hanging weight is perfect. I always aim for 270 live weight to bring 200 on the rail.
for temperament, it all depends on the individual pigs. ive had darling tamworths and jerk tamworths, etc. the last month is always the most terrible as im ready for them to just go. for loading, ive grabbed a 5 gallon bucket and backed them up the ramp when they wouldnt load. it does work in a pinch.
we usually do 4-5 big pigs a year and it costs about 200-250 per pig to feed and they go through about a quarter tonne of feed each.
if you do find yourself enjoying pigs in the future and want to keep them around longer term, check out those idaho pasture pigs or straight up kunes. i have a pregnant kune sow ready to go any day and they are just absolute dolls to keep around. my kids play with them and i lie down in their pasture without any fear. feed cost is about 15-20 percent of what i feed a standard size pig but they take twice as long to finish out. but for the husbandry aspect and the final product, you'll find it well surpasses any other pig or pork product out there :)
Thanks for sharing the insights, as always, I learn so much from your experience.
I haven't heard anyone talk about the taste of IPP or KuneKune pigs, so it's good to hear they taste good too. That may tip the scales for me one day.
I have a little red haired piggy that has wondered into my little homestead, would be y'all be able to help me identify what breed she is? On my channel just posted a few shorts, no pressure, thanks.
Great video. Really enjoy your channel. Great content. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks!
Also...the easiest loading I've ever had involved a bottle of pancake syrup they love sweet things and your not putting feed in their stomachs
Brilliant!
What were you live weights and hanging weights? How old when going to processor?
I don't have live weights, nor hanging weights. But I ended up getting back about 420 pounds of product from the two pigs. So that's 210 per pig. And the yield is usually 75% of the animal. So that means there were probably 280 each live weight.
Great video, I'm curious to know what your total input costs were to get 390 lbs of product at the end of the day. What's your average cost per pound?
I wasn't great with records. But it was about $6-$8 per pound of final product. 🤔
Feed costing a bomb is certainly no fun. You are close the RTP area. Have you thought about collecting produce and milk/dairy products that are no longer sellable from grocery stores, Costco, etc or even kitchen waste from the many restaurants there? Is this a viable option? Also, have you looked into black soldier fly?
Hello! We have larger-scale pig rotationally-raised pig operations near us that have claimed all of the grocery store/restaurant waste. Which I'm glad about because these larger-scale operations are still rotating their pigs around and they have lots of pigs, we only had 2. We did do this for a while while we lived in UT, collecting food scraps from grocery stores and giving them to our chickens. We found that it was too much of a time-suck for the small-scale producer to be driving around and collecting a bag of food here or there (not to mention making us spend more money on gas). I'm not suer how much of a dent black soldier fly would make on feeding 2 pigs, but we'll probably build a black soldier fly trap for our small laying flock eventually.
@@homesteadingwithPJ Wow! Even collecting food waste has become competitive!
@@kc66 True! I used to collect coffee grounds from the many coffee shops in my city for free for my black soldier fly units. However, it has turned into a first come, first served, free for all since the decision to allow backyard chickens in the city and the city has a program that teaches owners about the many ways to feed your flock. The city even shows how to build the BSFly units. Competion is fierce now!
@@stillnessbetween5103 Need to now get creative about collecting food waste people still throw away. What about used oil from restaurants? What is needed is some organic material to soak up the oil so that the BSF larvae won't drown in the oil. Has this been tried before?
This is interesting for sure. I'm not interested in pigs for meat (we don't eat pork) but what would you think of having a pig or two on the farm for other purposes? Where do they fit into the multi species permaculture?
If you don't eat pork I really don't think they're worth the trouble. You do have to constantly be moving them because they tear up the ground so much. We had ample space to be moving around just pigs, but if we didn't have enough space and had to move them onto the pasture that would have been a bummer. We had them in the same spot of forest that we had goats a year earlier, and the goats were much easier to handle and could be walked from one place to the other, plus we never bought any feed for them. If you're looking for another species to help out I would go with goats since you don't have to feed them anything. Pigs have to be fed or they get aggressive and they just keep getting bigger and bigger which is a safety hazard and has to be dealt with eventually.
@HighMountainHomestead fair enough! I did get a couple of free fainting goats recently to be weed control in my sheep pastures and they're kind of jerks lol not to me but to my sheep.
I found the same when I kept gats with my sheep. The sheep would always win in a true face off, but little goats are relentless bullies. @@ShepherdsCreek
If raising pigs for meat, do they need to be on wormer medication?
I did not deworm them once. But, I rotated them often, which helps.
The scraps is definitely an anomaly I raise nothing but RW and most of mine loved scraps...the sow I have now refuses them though...and while yes they could live off of the land just fine you will never get the results we as consumers expect without supplementing their feed