I’ve been calling around to various places, looking for stuff to feed the pigs. Left over stuff, stale bread, etc. We’ve been getting left over bagels from Bagel Works a couple of times a week, and boy do the pigs and chickens like that! But with feed prices as high as they are, we needed more. All sorts of places told me that they sent all of their stuff to our local food bank, and I had a rush of brains to the head and called them. They said they had a farmer who they gave stuff to, but put me on the list. Today, they called me and said the farmer they were using was in the hospital and might not be able to farm when he got out, so would we come pick up the stuff? We weren’t sure how much stuff there was, and wow. That’s a lot of slop!
The pigs and chickens sure enjoyed dinner time today! There was mostly vegetables and pasta type of stuff, very little meat. But there is more than our two pigs and 20 chickens can handle. The pigs are going to have piglets in less than a month, though, so we will figure out what to do with all this stuff. It’s a 20 minute drive each way, so probably $6 worth of gas, but that beat what we are paying for grain, and it’s a more varied diet, so better for them. We won’t be able to feed it to pigs that we will slaughter and sell to the public, but for our own use, it’s okay.
Even the sheep and horses enjoyed the windfall. Sue in particular loves loves loves melons and bananas, not to mention apples and pears. We are careful to not give them too many grain products, because they will overload on bread, but all those fruits and veggies are good replacements for hay, which is in really short supply this year, and quite expensive.
You aren’t kidding about hay prices. We did find a supplier in Conway, and it’s really good hay (well some has some slight mold issues, but not bad), but it’s about $4.50 per bale. We keep telling ourselves that each of these bales is worth at least two of the bales we were paying $2.50 for in NY, and that really isn’t far from the truth. It just hurts when you go pick up 20 bales and have to write a check for $90!
I didn’t realize that you could not feed pigs scraps and then sell the meat to the public. How weird. That means the general public will never taste really good pork unless they can raise it themselves – very sad.
I am STILL stuck in NY waiting for a buyer for the house, but when we finally get all settled in NH, let’s plan a visit.
No, the scraps will only be fed to our breeding girls, not to pigs destined for freezer camp, either ours or our customers. Since we aren’t planning to castrate the boys, we will have to keep them separate from the girls anyway, which makes feeding them differently feasible.