| The Pretender - 4/24/2025 14:11 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
Unless pasture farrowing has improved a LOT in the 25 years since we had sows & pigs in the field you're vastly over estimating the production of outdoor hogs vs confinement.
Weaning 6-8 pigs/litter was common. Between disease problems (yes there are soil borne diseases for piglets) and crushing, pig survivability was not good. Modern sow farms with good production are weaning 13+ pigs/litter and the sows are farrowing more litters/year than we ever imagined possible, resulting in weaning 30+ pigs per sow per year. We were doing closer to 14-15 pigs/sow/year outside 25 years ago.
You are correct about wet being the absolute enemy of pasture farrowing. Wet always = lot of work and sick pigs.
When it went good it was good, when it went bad, it was awful. Its fun to reminisce about but I don't miss it at all.
|
Outdoor Pigs