Idaho pasture Pigs
Raising Your Own
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I buy Breeders or Feeders?
If you have never raised pigs before I highly recommend starting out with feeders. Feeder pigs will give you an opportunity to get comfortable with raising pigs, develop your infrastructure, and see if pigs, particularly Idaho Pasture Pigs, will be a good fit for your family and land before you make a long term commitment to breeders.
So here are some questions that can help guide your decisions…
How often do you want to butcher? What is does your local market look like? Is your goal to provide pork for just your family or do you plan to sell it? Would you sell your pork retail or as a whole or half pig with customers paying the butcher costs? Are you just focusing on closing your protein loop and increasing your self sufficiency?
How many Pigs do I need?
You need at least two pigs. Pigs are very social animals and they thrive best with other pigs. Here at the Gather House we will not sell a pig to anyone with the intention of raising it alone. If you only need one pig find a family member or neighbor to raise the other one for. or have us raise the pig for with our custom grow out program.
What size pen do I need?
This is a question that I honestly can’t give a clear answer on because everyone’s land and circumstances look different. With IPP’s being a grazing pig they need access grass or hay in addition to a swine feed. The clearest number I give is that you can typically graze ten pigs to the acreage required to graze one cow. I have seen people successfully raise them in pens with hay, but we keep ours on pastures that are cross fenced with electric fencing, so we can rotationally graze and rotate our pigs through our pastures. Rotational grazing allows us to break our parasite cycles and protect the land from over grazing. We have multiple pens each about 3/4 acres fenced with electrical fencing. Most paddocks have both woods and grass and the pigs are good at foraging both. They will eat fallen nuts and acorns, turn the leaves to find grubs and other goodies. The forest also provides them with shade through the hotter months. If your pastures are in full sun and in a hot climate consider adding a shade cloth or make sure the have a cool well ventilated structure that they can get shade in.
What Are their Water Requirements?
Pigs and water just go together! They have a natural affinity for mud and water. Their are a lot of options for watering your pigs. We have used both water barrels with pig nipples and low troughs. They both have their pro’s and cons. Water barrels with a lid are nice because they reduce ability of becoming a mosquito breeding ground and they are a little less tempting for your pigs to knock over. We did crank strap ours to t-posts because even full the pigs could knock them over. One of the biggest issues we had with our water barrels was the bigger pigs playing with the nipples to make mud holes in front of the barrels or with the bigger pigs playing with them until they broke loose.
One of the other options we have tried was a low trough with an automatic waterer. This was what we put in our farrowing and it worked well with our extremally hot summer because our sow could just push on the side of the trough to spill out fresh water for her wallow as she needed it. We would also lower the water pressure and adjust the waterer to continuously run providing her with cool running water as we waited for her to farrow. This was a messy option and not ideal for a long term plan, but with her farrowing date falling onto a time with 112* temps keeping her cool in her farrowing pen was of upmost importance.
Our preferred watering method is free access to our lake. Our pig pastures border a 122,000 acre lake with a natural bank line for them to graze wallow and cool themselves. We don’t have to worry about them spilling or running out so this natural access is our preferred method of watering. When we first got into IPP’s I struggled to find an answer to if they could swim our of their pastures. I can confidently say that our pigs have shown no aptitude to do anything but lay and graze along the bank. We do extend a hog panel out into the water at the fences and tie the electric fence to it via an insulator. This is the setup we have even to divide our boar from the gilts/sows and no one has challenged it even in times of low lake levels. I can not speak for other pig breeds by Idaho Pasture Pigs do not seem to swim.
Whatever method you choose for watering you will need to provide your pigs with a wallow. If you do not build them a wallow where you want they will make one themselves and probably in the most inconvenient spot you can find. The wallow needs to be close to a water source so fresh water can be added regularly so it doesn’t dry up or get stagnant.
Pig Housing?
There are a lot of options out there but the first option we tried was an a framed pig house following the plans on the IPP Registry site. This option has worked so well for us that I haven’t been tempted to try anything else. The only change I would suggest would be to extend the main support board that runs along the ridge out a foot or two to make the phis easier to lift and move around. We have used our house for farrowing and really liked that it was open on both ends. We are in the south and rarely see any extreme winter temperatures, so having the ventilation has been great for us. In the winter we turn the houses, so that they block the cold winds and in the summer we orient them to allow the breeze to flow through. I have seen those raising pigs up north put a removable door at one end.
Just remember whatever you do it needs to be strong. Pigs love to scratch, rub, and in general mess with everything, so build it right the first time and save yourself time.
Feeding?
We feed all of our pigs both breeders and feeders a 16% Swine Grower that is soy/corn free and non-gmo. We feed our pigs based on condition but the general rule that we follow is 1 pound of feed for every month they are of age up to four or five months. At this point, we typically feed breeders 4 lbs and the feeders may get 5 lbs, depending on the available forage. As I am writing this we have beautiful winter forage for them to graze and they just aren’t as concerned with their feed, right now they really just prefer to graze so we have adjusted their feed back a little bit. We also partner with a local grassfed raw dairy and add whey to their feed as it is available. It is possible to free feed IPP’s and get them to butcher weight faster, but I think this compromises the flavor and quality of our meat. The reason we raise pigs, and IPP’s in particular, is to achieve a superior quality of pork. Raising them slow and on grass allows for beautiful marbling and amazingly sweet and flavorful pork. For our farm, faster is not better, like all things if we do not end up with a product superior to the status quo we aren’t going to sacrifice the time to do it.
Minerals?
Giving additional minerals are crucial to raising IPP’s. If you do find your IPP’s rooting, your mineral program is one of the first things to consider. We use a different mineral than most of the other IPP raisers, it is commonly suggested to use the Nexgen Minerals and we have a link to some helpful information about minerals and where to find them from the IPP Registry.
We do not feed our pigs soy and it is a component of the Nexgen Formula, so we use a mineral from Holistic Livestock Supply called Pastured Pig Performance Package. We have been using this mineral blend for several years and find that it meets all of the needs of our pigs. Shipping can be pricey, but a bag will last for a very long time. We feel that the quality and ingredients are a good investment in our program.
Pigs are not like cattle and you can not offer minerals free choice. The minerals need to be measured and added to the feed. Our feed already has some minerals added, but we add our additional minerals over the top of their feed. If we notice any rooting we will slowly add additional minerals to see if that solves the problem. We find that the additional minerals are usually only required during certain seasons or growth periods of our pigs, for example we add additional minerals to our nursing sows.
Fencing?
There are a lot of options when it comes to fencing and the right fence really depends on your property and goals. For us we use electric fencing and have had excellent results. We like the flexibility and reduced infrastructure cost of the electric fencing. There are some things to consider to have success with electric fencing. First your pigs need to be trained to the electric, this is not just a helpful suggestion, this is a necessity. Pigs react to electric very differently than other livestock, while the instinct for other animals is to back up when they get shocked the instinct for a pig is to charge forward and break through. Though they require the extra effort it is well worth it because once properly trained pigs tend to have a high level of respect for their fencing.
We find the younger they are trained the easier it is on the pig, so if you purchase a piglet from us they will come electric fence trained. The training pen that we use also doubles as our farrowing pen. It is 16’x32’ and is lined with hog panel and secured with T-post. We use a combination of fiberglass electric posts and t-post insulators. We try to get the electric lines far enough away from the fence panels that the pigs understand and recognize that the electric strand is what they need to avoid. We do not turn on the electric fencing until our piglets are about two weeks old. We find that most of our pigs are trained within two weeks, but we decide based on observing the pigs and how the interact with the fence. Do they carefully avoid the electric lines? If shocked do they immediately jump back?
Often one of the problems people have with electric fencing is not using a powerful enough charger. This fence needs to pack a punch so they learn quickly to respect it, if you have a weak charger or allow the fence to become ground out, the pigs will become trained to challenge it. We use a Cyclops charger that has a stored energy of 6.3 joules and an output of 5.0 joules.
We do not use solar chargers because we heard to many stories of their unreliability and where our pastures were located we were able to run electrical lines. It is usually cheaper to get a higher output fence that is hard wired than a comparable solar powered one.
For our breeder pens we use a combination of t-posts and fiberglass posts. Our breeder pens have two braided poly-lines that run at 12” and 18” and a top line at 36”. This top line is for other livestock that we will rotate through the pig pastures occasionally as the forage becomes too tall for the pigs and to knock everything down right before we plant our winter forage. We use the two lower lines for our breeders because we feel they may have a little more incentive to break though fencing as they come into heat. We find that if our pigs have all of their needs met, companionship of another pig, feed, water, shade, forage they don’t seem to have any desire to challenge the fence. We have only had one pig get out of our electric fence and that was because a tree fell on the fence in our boars pasture, thankfully he simply walked down the fence line and found a comfortable place to take a nap and happily followed us back to his pasture when offered a treat.
For our feeders we only run one line at 12” again as long as they have plenty of companionship, feed, water, shade, and forage they happily stay where we put them.
Investing in quality infrastructure the first time and being set up before you have get your pigs will make keeping and raising your pigs so much more enjoyable.