Hey guys, Casey here and today I want to
show you our
pig operation, our pastured pig operation
and how
we raise pigs on pasture here in a way
that
just stewards the land well.
Before i get into that, I just want to
share a few things. First is
I'm doing a 360 video. This 360 video allows you to to move around
while I'm talking and look
at things so you don't have to stare at
me the whole time.
When I watch "how to" videos on the web
I always wish they were 360 because I
would love to be able to just scroll
around
and look at the different
parts of the things that people are
talking about and
so i'm going to attempt to do that here
as well. And if you
even have like a VR headset, 
you can actually put that on and turn
your head
and you will look around like you
were standing here with me. It's pretty
neat.
Also if you're watching the 360
version of this video,
If you're having trouble and it seems
the quality is not great and you do have
a good internet connection, if you click
on the
the bottom right corner there should be
a gear icon
I think in the video. You can adjust the
quality there and
I would recommend bumping up the quality
as high as you can go.
If it doesn't play well, you may have to
bump it down. It just really depends on
your internet connection.
With that being said, if I haven't lost you
yet, I would like to show you what we're
doing here. So
over here in this area
you can kind of see about half of it
right now but it's fenced in,
that is a home what i like to call home
base. That is where the hogs always have
access to
If you imagine a wheel and you
have a hub and then you have spokes
coming out, this is the hub.
And the reason it's set up that way is
we have their water in there,
their shelter, and that's
where we
also feed them when we supplement them
with feed.
They also have all this shade from these
trees. They have
mud pits in there. It's really like hog
heaven in there. They
have everything they need. But what
they don't always get
out of that area is pasture. So
what we do here is we have these, if you
look out throughout our field, we have
these white step-in posts.
And each of these sections are, it's like
a one acre
paddock essentially. And so if you can
see all the way over there,
the far edge is where they were
as of about a week or two ago and they
ate all that down. And
they fertilized it, they
tilled up the soil, and and so now
we're going to give that land, that
piece of land, a rest. And so then
we've closed that off and we open this
next one up. And so I'm doing this with
polywire. So it's really simple to do
with polywire and step-in posts because
you can
move things very easily. Polywire will
roll up very easily, you can cut it, you
can tie it together.
It's a very quick way to take care of or
to
create paddocks. And so these are, I guess
you could say, semi-permanent but
not permanent because I do move the
step-in post from time to time.
So they're on this middle,
well that's not the middle but it's the
second paddock here,
right now. And as you can see it's a
little taller than the rest.
You can probably see some of the soil
is tilled up
and they're working through that right
now eating off that. When they're done,
they're going to come here, the one
that we're standing in right now.
And then they will continue to go until
they can get all the way around this
field.
And all of this depends, as far as how
quickly you move them off that, it really
depends on how many hogs you have.
And so if they eat it down really quick,
you need to be ready to move them to
the next paddock.
And so they can be out here during the
day eating and stuff, and then,
when they're ready to for shelter or
rest, they can go back into home base
over here.
When I supplement them they can go over
there and eat and they they always have
this pasture out here. And all of these
pastures,
the way that my land is set up is they
actually go into the woods a little
bit
on each. So they actually have woods at
the end so they can
forage in the woods as well as
feed off the pasture as well. It's kind
of dual-purpose there.
All right, so with that being said, so
also i want to say that this land,
two years ago, was row cropped and the
pastures were in very bad shape. So
they're actually helping me to recover
this pasture. It's amazing to see what
having hogs. This is the first year we've
had hogs on this
and it's amazing to see what they're
doing here. So
when we bought this property it was
row cropped. We weren't row cropping it.
We bought it a year ago and then a year
before that is the last year they row
cropped.
Last year I let the the pastures
go. I let them set and I just mowed them
I was trying to let them
recover some before
I had hogs on them. And now the hogs
are here
and it's really good. And I have some
areas over there that the hogs have
never been
and it's still rough. I mean there's
still a lot of Johnson Grass,
it's patchy, you can still find some corn
cobs in there even.
But where the hogs have been, they've
just done a really nice job. It's really
beautiful
out here and they will get it down to to
the dirt.
They'll root around and stuff and that's
okay.
It's not going to be like a cow grazing
and that's okay though.
But you can see they were here if you
look down.
They were on this not that long ago and
it's already recovered this nicely.
So it's not it's not the end of the
world. You can go back and reseed this
too if you want.
We put, initially I put
some Fescue, some
Orchard Grass, Clover,
and yeah. So I put those on there
just to seed it for the first time after
the hogs went through, the very first
time
and it's done really well. And they
keep putting that back into the soil.
As they work through it they're just
tilling it up and mixing seeds around
and
so they're doing a really
good job.
All right, so I'll take you over here where you
can see a couple of things. One
is, we'll take you over here so you can
see their,
what I like to call home base,
area a little better.
As we walk around the hub here, they're
gonna scream at me because
they think I'm gonna give them a treat
but they're gonna have to wait.
So as we walk
around here, if you look the way that I'm
walking,
I've got a water tote there
with a nipple on it so they can get
they can drink out of that. That's over
here.
And then behind me, or
well it's to my left, I have a sow with
some piglets.
She's a Kunekune, she's gonna be behind me right here,
Kunekune Guinea Hog
cross with piglets. We're trying them
out on pasture because they're really
good.
You don't even have to supplement them they do so
well.
My other hogs back here. I do have some
Kunekune Guinea Hog crosses there but
I also have Berkshires.
The thing about a Berkshire is they will
stall out on pasture, pure pasture,
because they don't have enough protein
or lysine so
I have to supplement them. And right now
the way that i'm doing that is through
non-GMO feed. There are other people
that do it different ways like
through hazelnuts or whey or
milk.
You know, that's something
to look into
for whatever you're trying to do. But
what my ultimate goal is
to cross these Berkshires with these
Kunekune Guinea Hogs
and hopefully create a hog that that
gains well, gets big,
but requires little to no supplementing
and so we'll see what happens there. But
my Kunekunes,
they did well all year last year
on nothing but pasture and then I fed
them hay in the winter.
And I did do some supplementing when it
was really cold out to get them some
protein.
But anyway, so let's walk back over
here.
I'll show you something else. So what I
do is
I have pastured chickens as well.
And right now I'm rotating those through
the paddocks as well.
And so with my chicken set up,
they are out in one of these
paddocks that the hogs have been on
already and I'm just
letting them kind of do the same thing
the hogs were doing.
They're just picking through things,
they're
eating some of the grass, they're eating
the bugs, taking care of parasites,
and fertilizing the
the land as well for us and ultimately,
you know, making the soil better
so the pastures do better. So
I'll show you them. So, if you look
in the direction, the way that I'm
walking, you can see
I have a portable coop out there on a
wagon frame.
And then I have poultry netting up.
And then I have livestock
guardian dogs in here as well.
So they'll be barking at us a little bit.
So those are Great Pyrenees. They're
actually still puppies.
And here comes the chickens.
Since having them in there
I've never
lost a chicken. Nothing's ever
gotten them and the dogs do a great job
taking care of them.
And they're actually pretty friendly.
They're a little more intimidating
than
they really are but
they take care of all the chickens. So
the chickens
are moved around these pastures, these
paddocks.
They're actually about to be moved over
a paddock
because they've almost exhausted this
one in my opinion
and they're ready to be moved. And so
we'll be doing that soon
as well. And anyway that
concludes our our pastured hog
operation. Hey guys, if you like this
video please check the description below
for links to items we may have used
as well as a link to our website
farmhacker.com where you'll find more
awesome stuff like this.
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Thanks for watching!
