[patchy1990]

Do any of you grow your own fruit and veg to feed your pigs? May start doing it..

how do you find it? is it very cost effective?

[Hermit]

We are aiming to grow our own food / hay for pigs and sheep as a personal project ,so far the tractor and accessories has cost thousands and still not a fence post for the pigs . I did see OH pacing the soon to be fence lines though so heres hoping! We dont aim to make a profit thank god just produce good pork? bacon for us. Nothing like being prepared We are thinking potatoes, kale, beet and swede.

[Eve]

We thought of it, but for us it is more cost effective to get leftovers from a wholesaler (at little or no cost) as we don't have enough land. Our pigs love pumpkins and overgrown marrows, and their shape and size keeps them busy for a while. 
Collecting windfall gives us a very good harvest for relatively little work and no expense.

[shetlandpaul]

we tried they are swamped with bins. good luck hermit is very impresive what your doing. we have just done a soil sample on our veg patch were the pigs were and its not showing any nutrients so that would explain our rubbish veg the first two years. my excuse anyway.

[robert waddell]

hermit i think the volume you would need to feed even a few pigs would outweigh the benefits on an area bassis  also potatoes and swede creates wind BUT they used to fatten cattle on hay and turnips now turnips are 90%water but damned good water
depends on your location far better getting waste potatoes and out of date veg then you can keep more pigs on the ground that would have been cropped

[Hermit]

What crops do you suggest Lillian? we have ideas based on what other folk are doing. We will only be getting a couple of weaners no breeding stock and will feed some hard feed as well. We used to breed large whites and saddlebacks years ago but we were on the mainland then and had access to waste food such as bread, veg and milk. No such things up here. Land is not an issue we have plenty of that,it is what will grow up here that we are limited by.

[robert waddell]

seaweed :wave:that is one of the difficulty's of  keeping pigs remotely it may suppries you what they can get from bare land(nobody has done a conclusive survey on this aspect of pig keeping) rotate the areas available then reseed with grass or stubble turnips the combination of pigs+green feeding(the soil)will improve the land i dout if there is any magic vegetable that will reduce the hard feed input

[Hilarysmum]

:wave:i dout if there is any magic vegetable that will reduce the hard feed input

If you find that magic veg please let me know.

[princesspiggy]

wer gona be growing veg this year too. bought loads of neep seeds last year, all done by hand here, apart from tiller, so takes longer than u think 9battling with the weeds) it ends up being feed to rabbits in the end cos they eat loads too. iv ordered 30 more apples trees today, but will be a few years before that contributes much, even if just for apple sauce   lol!

[binghamd]

I've read on an American site that Mangels are really good for pigs. They seem to be related to sugar beet and can be fed straight to pigs

[Hilarysmum]

They are; and make a good filler (imho) and make great toys, but personally I would feed them as an addition rather than instead of nuts. 

[Fowgill Farm]

We grow quite a bit of our own food and forage as well. The most difficult time is thro the winter and into early spring.
I'll start with summer we have cougettes about 14 plants, lettuces (cheap & quick), beetroots, summer cabbages, broccoli, spinach as well as surplus cucumbers & tomatoes.
In Autmn we have pumpkins, squashes, apples, plums, pears, damsons, sloes, hawthorn berries, acorns.
Through winter we have a turnip chopper into which we load beets, mangels, turnips, potatoes, Pony carrots from the ag merchant, winter cabbages too rabbits permitting! .
The worst part of the year is now until beginning of May when all the outside veg get going as we're just off the North Yorks Moors and things take a while to get warmed thro around here. At the moment we're chopping the last of the beets, mangels & potatoes supplemented by pony carrots (£2 sack from ag merchants) so i fear my nut consumption is going to go up thro April unless the polytunnel crops of lettuce & cabbages get going sharpish!
HTH
Mandy 

[welshlass181]

We'll be growing our own pig food this year on the land.  I always have a small veg garden at home (i live on a housing estate) so thought that i would just expand it at the field.  I love growing my own stuff even if it was just for the house ...... all i do is chuck a load of spuds that are sprouting in the ground and in a few months there's loads there is a certain amount of satifaction growing ur own food

[Elissian]

If you like sweetcorn then the pigs will eat the plants after you've harvested the cobs.