Stunting and Worms

Sweetened

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Hello everyone!

We purchased a bred sow April of 2016. She had a litter of 12 and I just couldnt trust her. While we never had an actual problem with her, sometimes you just get that feeling. We sold her when the piglets were 6 weeks. She REFUSED to eat anything except grass (literally starved herself and started losing weight), so I fastidiously pulled grass every day, enough to keep a 500lb sow with babes in good condition. All the grass clippings went in with her etc. I always had grain in for the piglets but they ate very little. When she was shipped, her piglets came off feed entirely until i got them out into an overgrown garden and through grain amongst the plants and dirt.

These guys became so overloaded with worms, on top of stunting themselves from coming off feed, and they have been chronic ever since. Our berk boar, who is in with them and was born in july (the gilts i retained were born in may) is 250lbs, fat and healthy. The gilts are 110lbs, 100lbs and 45(!!!!!!) Lbs respectively. I have to worm them CONSTANTLY to see any growth at all. Again, the boar seems uneffected. Our purchased feeder pigs this year also were very wormy, and made weight about 2 months after they should have. We expect longer growth times as we do not feed commercial hog ration.

I went to buy replacements from a neighbour who got into pigs a year and a half ago, and his april 2016 born pigs are 45lbs at MOST!

If pigs CONSTANTLY need to be dewotmed, I really dont want to be raising them, but then I look at my boar and he doesnt have this issue... is there a way to keep the worm load down in pigs without this perpetual deworming cycle that im concerned is making things worse for them? I was reading about supplementing their minerals and read the red coloured Diatomaceous earth is helpful with that from the trace nutrients in the bentonite clay that gives it its red colour. I have had great success worming dogs, cats, poultry/waterfowl and goats with this when offered free choice or mixed into food... has anyone found this to work with pigs?

Also, any input on spurring growth in stunted pigs?

Thanks!
 

NH homesteader

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I assure you that pigs do not typically have to be dewormed that often. I have never had this issue. @farmerjan is well versed in raising pigs.

I wouldn't breed pigs that had to be dewormed that often for fear of passing it on.

How much space do they have? Do you rotate pasture?

Edit: sorry I just saw that your boar is in with them and growing fine. Sounds more likely bad genetics than pasture issues.
 

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Another who might be able to help is @misfitmorgan though she isn't on as much due to personal reasons... I have seen her back posting over the past couple of days. I would think about the only way to "spur growth" would be to provide hog chow/commercial feed designed to help them pack on weight. I've never heard of pigs having worm issues like you're experiencing and will be looking at picking up several feeders here shortly, so I'll be following this thread. I would have to guess genetics as well...
 

Sweetened

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Thanks for the replies! They are in a 20x 20 pen, well bedded, tilled, cleaned, DE'd every year. In the spring they are rotated through my gardens, but are otherwise in confinement as we just dont have enough land to graze them. While I understand this creates worm pressure, Our other animal species have never been so overwhelmed and negatively effected as these. When we have worm problems in the goats, it is usually fresh spring pasture after the rains or if there is excessive hot and humid weather, and the adults usually recover quickly on their own, kids are monitored and everyone treated IF required. Since we had the horse, cow and goats together, worm problems havent been an issue.
 

farmerjan

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No pigs should not need to be wormed that often, we only wormed as necessary and that was seldom. That said, it sounds like it might be a combination of things. First off, you need to have the manure run by a vet for worm load, and WHAT KIND. I suspect there is a problem that you are not seeing and the sow may have brought something in with her since you said she was purchased. I also am thinking that since you said you don't feed a commercial feed that they are severely lacking something. A trace mineral or something. Exactly what are you feeding?
I have always fed a BALANCED hog ration, and we always have DE in all our feed; chicken feed, cattle pellets, sheep feed, hog feed, free choice trace minerals, everything. Also, we have a ration made up that has a form of kelp to boost the trace minerals.
If the sow weighed 500 lbs and had a litter of 12 then bad genetics doesn't seem to be the sole issue but it could have been a bad combination with the boar she was bred to.
I would put them on a commercial feed even it you don't like to feed it, and get them to size and ship them or put them in the freezer and maybe get a gilt or 2 from wherever you got the boar from? Seems like his genetics are acclimated to your area.

I do not see where DE does all that much when doing a complete pen cleaning once a year. We use lime heavily when trying to do a sanitizing, it will sweeten the ground and usually seems to do more than the DE and it is alot less expensive so can be used more liberally. I find DE does alot more as a feed thru and mineral additive and also for a dust box for the chickens mixed with wood ashes and some dry dirt/sand.
 

babsbag

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I have only raised two pigs. I got them when they were about 6 weeks old and grew to 150 lbs in about 5 months. I was done caring for pigs at that point and had them butchered. They lived in a 10x16 enclosure and were never wormed. They were fed lots and lots of lunchroom scraps from the school, eggs, milk, garden produce, apples, and a 3 qt scoop of hog grower daily.
 

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Yeah I have dewormed my pigs very rarely. I do use commercial feed. I don't have the ability to feed them anything else without commercial feed, particularly in the winter. If @misfitmorgan comes on at some point, she knows a lot about pig feed and nutritional requirements. She makes her own feed.

I have my pigs in a smallish area at the moment, but we move them regularly except when the ground is frozen. More panels going up in the spring though! They do love to root!
 

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We are lucky in that our feed mill nutritionist is into more natural healthy alternatives than just "chemical", additives or antibiotics. No they don't use organic grains, but Countryside Natural Products was founded here in Va and I have tried some of their stuff. However, I cannot justify the cost of organic grains as much as I would like to. But we do try to use little or no artificial or chemical additives and the mill uses basically very little byproducts, opting for real grain and not filler stuff. It is healthier and the 17% pellet that we use for the cattle has both "Tasco" a form of kelp, and DE in it for feed through worm and larvae control. The animals really like it, not like some of the commodity pellets that they tolerate but don't really like.
 

misfitmorgan

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I am here off and on, sorry i didnt see this sooner.

I would have to agree with everyone elses comments...needing to worm pigs a lot is not a problem i have ever seen or heard about unless it was the middle of a wet summer in some place warm with to many pigs crowded in a dry lot for a few months without enough feed....even then its rare. When out piglets are born they get wormed, if they are feeder pigs they are not wormed again in their life. Our breeder pigs only get wormed if they start losing substantial weight without a ration change, again this is rare. We have seen so few worm problems in our pigs that we have only ever wormed some of them once in their life even at 5-6yrs old.

So question 1 is..what are you worming with? Are there any signs making you think it is worms other than weight loss/lack of gain?

Unless your seeing definite signs of worms i would be highly skeptical that your problem is worms esp in the middle of winter in Canada. Even if it has been a warmer winter to kill worms/parasites outside the host body it only needs to be under 32F for around 12hrs or so....basically if your ground is frozen you shouldnt have new worm problems.

Pigs have a unique design to them in that they will grow as feed/nutrition allows. A pig that is fed a balanced diet of 18% protein thru a creep feeder that is not lacking any vitamins or minerals and has free choice water will be 300lbs by 6 months old no problem.
Conversely a pig fed on nothing but shell corn, i personally have seen them be 100-125lbs at 6 months and the owner/farmer/4-h kid can not be convinced that it would be cheaper and better for the pig in the long run to feed a commercial feed or at least something more balanced.

There is a local farmer that feeds only shell corn to his pigs and touts how he loves raising pigs because they are so cheap to raise....we swapped numbers and he had to pick his jaw up off the floor. He was feeding two pigs a 4 gallons of a 5 gallon bucket per day of shell corn,a 5 gallon bucket of corn is approx 30lbs filled to within an inch of the top. This does depend a bit on moisture but on average its 30lbs or so.

Corn locally is $5/50# atm..it does vary from $5-6/50#.
30#/5gal = 6# per gallon
4gal X 6# = 24#
50#/24#= 2.08
$5/2.08= $2.40
So $2.40 per day is what he was feeding his pigs.
At 6 months old he has $144 of feed into each pig and they are at max 150lbs so will need another 100lbs which will take his roughly 4 months(120 days) to put on them with shell corn.
$2.40 per day x 120 days = $288/2 = $144 per pig
The first 2 months were fed by the breeder, the next 8 months were fed by the farmer. Farmer bought the pigs for $60/each at 8 weeks old. So when he does get them to butcher weight he has $348 into each pig for feed and purchase price and then he pays for butcher on top of that.

Compare that to us feeding our pigs on average 5lbs/day of balanced feed. By 6-7 months old they are 250-300lbs.
Our feed cost us $14.50/100# atm.
$14.50/100# = $0.145 cost per lb for feed
$0.145 X 5# = $0.73
Plus we feed around 1/3 of a bale of hay per pig which is $1 per pig per day.
$1.73 total
Our daily total is close to the farmers but length of feed time makes a big difference.
Farmer
$1.20 per pig
240 days(8 months) x $1.20 = $288
150 days(5 months) x $1.73 = $259.5
Thats with all commercial feed aka feed milled at our mill.

Keep in mind these numbers of mine are skewed. Corn varies, the cost of our feed varies based on if it is our grains or the mills and even when we buy. I averaged out the first 2 months of our piglets as equaling one month of adult ration which is an exaggeration. We make our own hay so a whole bale of hay actually only cost us about 60cents so 1/3 is approx 20cents which drops our daily feed cost to $0.93 per pig if we have mill bought feed at $14.50/100# but even then it is usually $14.25 and sometimes $13.75 it depends on cereal grain prices. The short way to put it is he is paying 2.5x what we do per pig and taking almost twice as long to make weight so no him feeding shell corn is not helping him in any fashion at all. All that is even before figuring out labor to feed/water daily and stall/pen cleaning for the extra 4 months.

So that all leads up to the next question. What are you feeding them, how much feed are you giving them, what is the protein in the feed, what vitamins and minerals are in the feed, is it a balanced feed? Much like goats and sheep if they are lacking a mineral/vitamin in their diet they will show it but often pigs show it by not gaining weight as they should. If they dont like feed and prefer grass/pasture have you tried supplementing them with hay? Alfalfa hay contains between 12-20% protein depending on the time of year it is cut, grass hay averages about 8% protein.

Things to remember pig starter is 18% protein generally, Pig grower is 15-16% protein, pig finisher is 18% protein. So until approx 3.5months old you want 18% protein feed, after that until approx 150lbs live weight you want 16% protein, from 150lbs to 300lbs you want 18% protein again. You can find 21% pig feeds but thats usually used for slower pigs to catch up and is rather hard on them, i wouldnt feed it to anything you wanna keep for breeding stock.

Pigs will not eat without drink and will not drink without food. This does not mean they literally wont eat at all or drink at all but food intake(weight gain) is directly tied to water intake and vice versa. Adult pigs need 3-5 gallons each per day of water...there is an actual formula for how much water is needed per pound of feed but if your giving the normal 5lb/day then 3-5gallons of water is fine per pig.

The other thing that effects weight gain a lot is environment. Many people this past summer had a terrible time putting weight on their pigs because it was usually hot suddenly in areas that typically had lower temperatures or a steady climb in heat. Hot pigs will eat less. Feed actually causes the pigs to heat up when they eat though, different commercial feeds cause a different amount of "digestive" heat.
The old farmers used to talk about feeding "hot feed" this has two different meaning based on whether its a pig farmer or not. Generally in most livestock is hot feed, many farmers feed hot feed to animals they wanna butcher early. A good example of this is meat chickens who are fed 21% protein versus egg layers who are fed 16% protein feed. The difference is the high protein will literally burn out the liver or kidneys etc of the birds which makes no difference in meat birds who are slaughtered at 8 weeks or younger, again versus the egg layer who will be alive for 2-5yrs depending.
So in pigs hot feed can be high protein aka 21% or food that makes pigs hot literally as in digestive heat. Have you ever ate a big meal and then got the sweats or felt hot...this is the same thing..digestive heat. The heat our bodies make to digest large or calorie/protein heavy meals is what makes most people choose lighter fare/smaller meals for hot weather.
A way to fight this is either feed your pigs smaller meals a few times a day, feed during early morning before it is hot or late at night after it cools, or use a creep feeder so they can eat a few bites throughout the day. Keep in mind that even if you dont think it is hot out adult pigs like it 70F(21C) or less.

There is a formula for temp preferences as well:
Birth - 15# - 86F(30C)
15# - 55# - 86F-70F(decrease temp with weight for every 2.5lb gain reduce heat by 1F)(30-21C)
55# - 110# - 68-70F(20-21C)
110# - 250# - 68-64F(21-18C)
Lactating Sows - 64F(18C)
Also a number of pigs housed indoors together prefer it even cooler around 61F(16C)

Many people have great success with raising pigs for meat by just winging it. A pig raised on shell corn in a forest it can forage in will likely do perfectly fine, a pig raised on a cement slab on shell corn will not. Many many other people have issues with getting their pig to grow or getting it to grow lean. Many people think the old idea of raising a pig on whatever slop you can find is great and how to do it but often find out sooner that it is not the way to go or after butcher find out they have a pig with no fat or all fat.
 

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