Feeding when times are tough

Z's Farm

Exploring the pasture
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What exactly is fooder. I have four baby pigs they are about 3 months old at the most. They are currently on 16% grower feed with cracked corn and vegetation that we cut.
 

jaasp

Just born
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Fodder is when you take barley grain and sprout it. There are a ton of very expensive commercial fodder set-ups out there, but honestly, for the pigs, all you need are a few 5 gallon buckets. It's a simple process, just soak the seeds the first day, and then sprinkle with water for a few more afterwards.. soon, you'll have buckets of nice sprouted greens to give to them. It's much healthier, and cheaper, then the store bought feed. It's very easy for them to digest, and they put on healthy weight, not just fat. I get my barley at only about $.05 a lb from a local grower, which turns into about 7lbs of feed... less then a penny a pound. For the pigs, they run about $4 per adult head a month, and a much more consistent diet then kitchen scraps. Meat products make their dung stink way worse then just the greens too. So in the 4-5 months I'm feeding the little ones, my cost is only about $20-$25 to get them to butcher weight per head. I got $1.08/lb at the last sale I took them to, and the avg weight was 243 for 6 pigs. Not a bad turnaround.
 

Shortstuff

Chillin' with the herd
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Fodder is when you take barley grain and sprout it. There are a ton of very expensive commercial fodder set-ups out there, but honestly, for the pigs, all you need are a few 5 gallon buckets. It's a simple process, just soak the seeds the first day, and then sprinkle with water for a few more afterwards.. soon, you'll have buckets of nice sprouted greens to give to them. It's much healthier, and cheaper, then the store bought feed. It's very easy for them to digest, and they put on healthy weight, not just fat. I get my barley at only about $.05 a lb from a local grower, which turns into about 7lbs of feed... less then a penny a pound. For the pigs, they run about $4 per adult head a month, and a much more consistent diet then kitchen scraps. Meat products make their dung stink way worse then just the greens too. So in the 4-5 months I'm feeding the little ones, my cost is only about $20-$25 to get them to butcher weight per head. I got $1.08/lb at the last sale I took them to, and the avg weight was 243 for 6 pigs. Not a bad turnaround.
So your just soaking the seeds in the bucket and sprinkling water for 2 more days? How much seed per bucket and is that 1 bucket per pig?
 
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