Give Thanks to the Meaties

[MontyJ]

Pigs are pretty easy to raise. I've raised a few over the years. If they are properly cared for they can gain from 1-3 pounds a day. I had Landrace and Durocs. The Durocs seemed to grow a little faster than the Landrace if I remember correctly. Make sure you have a good fence, and ring them if needed. Pigs are escape artists and are very hard to catch once they are loose.

I have most of the parts to build a whizbang style plucker, but I'm debating on doing it. To me, the plucking is not the hard or time consuming part. I can pluck a chicken in 2 minutes or less. It's the gutting that seems to take forever for me. I guess a plucker would save time since it takes only a few seconds, but I would realy love to design a whizbang chicken gutter

 

[Stubbornhillfarm]

We did our first pigs last year. They were amazingly easy to keep and tend. We raised 4. They were the easiest animals to raise thus far. We will be getting some more mid July.

 

[skeeter9]

BJ - we did 3 pigs, but only 1 was ours. The others were for other people, but it's much easier on the pigs and they gain better if they have company. These were Yorkshire crosses. Super easy to raise and we will definitely be doing it again. We didn't really handle them at all, but they were very friendly. I accidentally let them out one day and they were having a blast running around our property. After we got through laughing at their antics, they went right back in their pen with a little coaxing. It was surprising how tame they were.

 

[vfem]

You guys are funny, I just don't 'give a pluck'!

Seriously, we skin ours. Pull off the skin like little coats. I can gut them in no time, so that doesn't bother me. I want to get more asap, but husband has cut me off right now. He's working 60 hour weeks with no sign of it slowing down. He ask me to revisit the idea in the fall.

So I have a few muscovy/pekin cross eggs I think I'm going to pop under a few silkies and maybe raise some meat ducks out in the chicken coop and he'll not know until its time for them to go! lol