I’m often asked why we don’t let our pigs eat grass or roam outside to forage for their food. While there are people who raise their hogs outside, we choose to keep ours in climate-controlled buildings. Not only does this allow our livestock to remain comfortable in warm barns, it allows us to monitor what they are eating.
I headed to Google to see what popular information would come up about livestock feed. And I was frustrated with the results. The most popular articles talked about pigs eating slop, bugs, larvae and vegetables. While hogs are curious in nature and will eat about anything in front of their nose, it’s not what most livestock farmers are feeding their animals.
Our hogs eat a mixture or grains. We raise our own corn and use it as the base of our livestock feed. We have our own feed mill on the farm. So we can grind the corn we harvest from our fields. After it is ground, we add a mixture that includes soybean meal and other vitamins and minerals. We can grind feed based on the pigs age, weight or any concerns we might have. Younger pigs can get different feed than the older hogs.
We don’t add any grass or slop to our pig feed. I do remember a time when I was young when we would throw out some scraps to the hogs in the outside lots. And they would eat it. But we’ve come a long way since then. We’ve learned that slop isn’t the best feed program for us. We give our human bodies a balance of vitamins, minerals and food. We think we should do the same for our animals. It’s a fine-tuned feed program that provides the best nutrition for them. And still turns out to be some pretty tasty bacon and pork chops.
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