Building a better chicken run

[Silo]

Sounds like some good meat! Bacon, sausage mmmmmm

 

[Bluebonnet]

Sounds like some good meat! Bacon, sausage mmmmmm

I also raise Gloucestershire Old Spots Pigs and I do not want these feral pigs anywhere near my precious hams.

That and to put things into perspective, these feral hogs get up to 1,000 pounds, that is x10 larger than myself. Not only do they carry all kinds of diseases but they also have huge, sharp tusks that they can use to charge at anything in their path.

Less bacon and more like having a bunch of Spanish fighting bulls on your land that could very well kill you if they get close enough and you do not have a shotgun ready.

 

[Silo]

My friend has feral hogs on his land and they tear it up. I'd like to get some pigs what's it like raising them?

 

[Bryant Redhawk]

Arkansas Fish and Game uses circle traps to capture the feral hogs here, they are working but I fear we will never get rid of the problem hogs unless we all decide to play cowboys and Indians with them being the Indians. Hunting them is not the best way to get them in control, a trap will capture several so you can dispatch them in groups.

We are lucky where we are, no feral hogs are present but just twenty miles further east has some issues with them. South Arkansas seems to have the biggest problems with feral hogs. I have friends down in Dumas that always ask me to come on a hunt.

 

[Bluebonnet]

Raising pigs is a wonderful experience. They are really good mothers and easy to care for. Very affectionate and happy creatures with playful and social personalities.

I raise them up to a slaughtering weight and then pay to have someone come out and process them for me.

After that, I take and cut them into primals and butcher them myself since it is really easy to do. I make up my own sausages and seal everything that I will not eat right away and pack them into chest freezers and take the hams and bacon and cure them and let them hang in the pantry.

If you have the land and depending on what else you grow, you can get more and better meat than you ever could from the store at a much lower price per pound.

Pork from your own pigs is pork tasted for the very first time.


As for those feral pigs, I wonder how many could fit into a trap and how effective that might be? Anything to be rid of these pests.

 

[Bryant Redhawk]

The largest number that I know of being caught in one of the circle traps is 5. I think it could depend more on which feral group, sow with piglets or boars for example. once they are in the trap you could just dispatch them on the spot or you could capture and remove them one at a time for dispatching. I would much prefer to be able to use their meat than to just let them rot so I am in the process of learning all I can about best methods for cleaning and proper precautions to take in order to not catch any of the myriad of diseases they can carry.

My wife and I have plans to raise one pig per year on our farm for the sole purpose of making meat and pork fat. We have plenty of acorns, hickory nuts for this one pig to eat, this will make the flesh very tasty and not anything like you could find in a supermarket. More like the Serrano ham of Spain is what we will be shooting for.

We will not have cattle ever, they are not in our plans because we firstly don't have the space they would need, secondly we could never use all the milk a dairy cow would produce and third we don't eat that much red meat. We eat, chicken, rabbit, goat, guinea, duck and fish for most of our meat needs. We do have friends that raise grass fed cattle and we trade for any beef that we need for our diet.