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The Internet | When I have the time I like to ride my motorbike in a responsible manner, officer, around the eastern counties of England mainly because it's handy from where I live. It's also very intensively farmed.
There's not a lot of livestock there, but what is generally oinks. They keep a lot of pigs outside, so I got a couple of pictures.
It's a long time since I worked with outdoor pigs but it eorks something like this.
The breeding stock live outside and the sows are moved around the site depending where they are in their breeding cycle. There farrow in paddocks with individual huts but are free to roam around the paddock. Piglets stay with mum until they are weaned, mum goes to the service paddocks with the boys until she's in pig again, when she goes to the dry sow paddocks.
Piglets stay on site for several months, but I can't remember how long. They then get taken inside where they are finished (fattened) in straw yards.
The whole site is mobile and stays on a particular field for 12-18 months. It's effectively a break crop in the arable rotation. Wheat stubble was preferred by the guy I worked for.
The idea is that it's lower fixed costs than indoor rearing. There are some disease benefits to being less intensive compared to indoors. I can't remember what the numbers were they do get slightly fewer pigs per sow, but not as many as you might think. Wet winters were hard on pigs staff and land. You build wallows for them in the summer.
It's 25 years since I worked with outdoor pigs, it was really hard work, but I enjoyed working with the pigs
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20250330_124238 (full).jpg (123KB - 5 downloads)
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