Grow Your Own Pig Food

Most commercial livestock feed contains soybeans and corn. Every now and then, you get lucky enough to have an extra ingredient like oats or buckwheat. But those are usually just used to increase the overall weight of the bags you’re buying.

Either way, you’re not going to get a lot of variation in your hogs’ diet from commercial feed and if you’ve raised pigs, its not cheap due to the mass pigs consume. And yes, corn and soybeans on their own are just enough to keep your pigs growing and satisfied. But at the end of the day, the more variety you add, the happier and healthier they’ll be. And honestly, growing your own food is easy, cheap, and quite frankly, you’ll know what your hogs are eating and where it comes from without having the extra stress and cost attached to seeking out organic options or being under the constant threat of shortages.

Pasture Pigs vs Meat Pigs

Your foraging hogs, like the Idaho Pasture Pig or KuneKunes, won’t need nearly as much feed as your other breeds will. And most pigs will make up a great chunk of their dietary needs if they can forage to some degree. But even then they’ll still need to be supplemented with grains and corn. But for those of us that have a patch of land to spare, you can grow a heck of a lot on just a few square meters, especially if you’re intercropping your edibles. Now it doesn’t matter whether or not you leave it in the field for them to eat where they grow, or if you’re planting, harvesting, and processing the feed for later storage—the general nutritional value you need to be looking for is going to remain very much the same. High in energy, amino acids like protein and lysine, and a good variety of vitamins and minerals.

Nutrients Needed for Pig Growth

So, let’s have a look at what kinds of percentages of these nutrients a pig would need.

Younger animals are going to need more of everything. They’re putting so much energy into growing and putting on muscle and fat that they just need a little more. As the pig ages, its requirements drop.

For a younger pig under 40 pounds, you’ll need at least 18% protein in their daily diets.

When they reach the 50-pound mark, you can go down to 16%. And at 80 pounds, it goes down some more, to 14 %, and any animal above 150 pounds goes down to 13%. Pregnant or nursing sows would also need a little more than her weight would usually require, but this is very dependent on the species and how large her litters usually are.

Lysine for Pigs

Then there’s lysine to consider. Lysine is a micronutrient that every living thing needs. Without it, we can’t convert protein into a usable substance, and pigs are no different. They need it just as much as we do. They don’t need more than 1.5 percent of it as part of their daily nutritional needs. The problem lies in the fact that lysine is mostly found in animal products, and not a lot of what you can grow has any of it at all. You can supplement with milk and eggs to give them that very essential nutrient, but it’s not feasible to feed them solely on dairy and eggs, now is it? Luckily there are quite a few crops out there that has plenty of Lysine, you just need to know where to look!

What to Plant for Pigs

Let’s start with the most popular crops to grow for your pigs, besides corn and soybeans, and move our way down to some lesser-known but highly nutritious food options.

 Rye:

Rye is one of those crops that can grow just about anywhere. They'll do fine in poor soil conditions; they can be heavily oversown, and they don’t need much care from you other than some water every now and then.

If your pigs are left to forage and the rye is too tall for them to reach, they’ll just trample the stalks down to get to the grains on top. Or you can remove the seed head for later storage and feed the stems to them as is.

Rye isn’t a perfect grain; it carries only around 10 percent protein, but it has a very high starch content, which translates to 62 percent pure energy.

Given that rye isn’t quite as tasty as the other options on the table, its best use is to bulk up your food stores and to use it mainly as a very good way for your pigs to build fat and muscle.

Clover:

Planting clover will require virtually zero effort on your part, and it’s the cover crop that will have the highest amount of proteins and minerals out there for you. There are many species to choose from, all varying in their nutritional make-up. Any of them will be at the higher end of quality when it comes to animal feed. At the very least, you can get 17 percent of protein, and at the high end of the scale, 33 percent! It’s low in lignin and fiber, and the high crude protein it contains does decrease as the plant ages.

White and red clover are the best middle-man options. They grow incredibly quickly; both are cold-hardy, and they can be oversown to the extreme. Clover also gives you the dual purpose of having a ground cover laid down when a field would otherwise lay fallow. When the season finally allows you to plant something else, the clover becomes a high-protein pig food when you pull it out.

Pregnant sows will seek out white clover, even when they’re given the option between old pig favorites like legumes and alfalfa. And some studies suggest that pigs who are left to forage almost entirely on Ladino Clover with only minimal grain supplementation gain more weight than pigs reared on alfalfa do.

Alfalfa:

Speaking of Alfalfa, there’s a reason that it's one of the most common livestock feeds to get for just about any farm animal. Alfa has just a little more protein than soybeans do. And it’s more nutritionally dense in minerals like calcium, cobalt, iron, potassium, and magnesium. Then there’s its high amount of vitamin A, which is utterly necessary for growth, vision, and skin health.

But alfa is rather low in energy; that’s where high-carbohydrate crops like rye, oats, and corn come in as a good high-calorie addition.

Even horses, with their sensitive digestive tracts, love alfalfa. There is virtually no animal on your farm that won’t eat it; it’s just one of those good all-around crops that’s got enough nourishment in it to feed every corner of your land.

You can grow a lot of Alfalfa on a small plot. It’s drought- and pest-resistant, and it's a perennial. This means that one patch can be harvested and left to regrow over and over again. It’s also the best option for those that live in deserts and hot and dry environments.

And while it’s perfectly suitable for fresh eating and as hay, you’ll get a lot further by pelleting it for later use. This will allow you to add other grains and grasses you have growing on your property to the mix, for that extra energy that the Alfalfa lacks.

Buckwheat:

Buckwheat is mostly viewed as an additional grain to increase feed, more than it’s looked at for its nutritional value. And what a shame! You’ll get a decent amount of protein, anywhere from 10 to 16 percent. But it’s the lysine percentage that makes it so valuable to you. Depending on how young the plant is, the stalks alone will account for 5.7 percent, and the grain heads will account for 8 to 9 percent. Buckwheat grows so incredibly fast that it would be easier to let it just grow out to give you that precious 3 percent extra. From planting to harvest, buckwheat only needs 2 and a half months to mature. They intercrop well with cowpeas, sunflowers, and rye, and it’s just about the easiest crop to grow on our list. You can get a heck of a lot for very little space. And pigs will be happy to eat it in any form: fresh, hay, chipped, or pelleted. And if you’re clearing out the field for a fresh sowing, they’ll be perfectly content to munch on the roots too.

But buckwheat comes with a warning label. It produces a compound called fagopyrins. This causes skin photosensitivity in lighter-skinned animals. It won’t be a big problem for a light-skinned pig to have it on occasion, but it can’t make up more than 10 percent of their feed. Pigs with more pigmentation shouldn’t give you any worries unless you feed them more than 60 percent of their overall feed with buckwheat.

Sunflowers:

Sunflowers are one of the major sources of food in almost every animal feed product. Our agricultural setup would literally collapse without sunflower production. Higher than any other material on our list in protein, it’s got 30% of it! It’s got plenty of oils, minerals, vitamins, and micronutrients. And most of the time, only 20% of the plant is actually used. When in reality, the whole thing is edible—roots, leaves, stems, and seed heads.

Sunflowers are so easy to grow! They’re drought-resistant; they don’t mind being planted in close proximity or alongside other plants, and quite frankly, you’d be losing out if you weren’t making use of this readily available and low-effort food source.

Corn:

Next up is corn. And we're not talking about the cobs. Yes, those are very high in energy and nutrients and are one of pigs' favorite foods to eat. We’re actually referring to the stalks and leaves.

The corn kernels that are put into commercial feed don’t contain all that much lysine, but the rest of the plant does. 7% of it!

Growing corn requires more space, and it doesn’t do all that well when it's intercropped with other grasses and grains. But seeking out the stems and leaves from factories, processing facilities, and straight from farms is a very cheap and convenient way to add to your pork chow. You don’t just have to rely on fresh supplies to feed them right now. It chips and dries very well for long-term use. They'll lose a bit of their nutrient density as they dry out, but there’s enough of it left intact to make it worth your while. And with such excessive amounts of waste left on the field and in landfills, you’ll be doing every one and your hogs a favor by picking them up.

If you do happen to have a little space for growing corn and you want to use the space to grow as much as possible, the best approach would be to intercrop it with pumpkins, peas, and beans. Vining vegetables will use the corn stalks to hold on to, and the pumpkins or squashes beneath will work as a ground cover to help retain water. The Native Americans called this method the Three Sisters, and it worked very well to provide the people with a well-rounded nutritional harvest from a single space. It’ll serve your household and give you so much produce that you’ll have a good amount of supplementation for your animals too.

Intercropping:

Since we’ve touched on the Three Sisters' intercropping method, now would be a good time to look at how you should approach intercropping in general. A single acre can provide a lot of food and nutritional value when you add a maximum amount of variety to that space. Our habit of mono cropping isn’t necessary. Plants grow next to each other in nature all the time, why shouldn’t they do it on your land? The only staple crop you might have a little trouble with is your commercial varieties of corn, and that’s thanks to human’s genetic tinkering that’s made it so hostile to other species growing with it. They do fine with vining and ground covering vegetables, but adding other corn, cereals and grasses might stress them out a little too much to produce a good harvest. They don’t like to compete with their own kind.

The great thing about pigs is that they can eat anything that any other animal on your property eats. So you can absolutely feed them based solely on what you need to feed another species of livestock that isn’t as flexible as pigs are. You might have to add a protein-rich suppliment to give your pigs an extra boost if they’re about to farrow or are still young and need some more to put on growth.

Things to consider

There are three things to keep in mind when you’re choosing the crops you'll be sowing. Protein, energy, and whether or not those particular crops can be planted with others

Focus on what can grow beneath the soil, on top of it, and at heights above your head.

Root vegetables like sweet potatoes, turnips, and such are going to make use of the ground beneath and still supply you with foliage above the ground too. When planted alongside other crops, they won’t grow as large as you’d like for your household, but they’ll still grow, and they’ll fill up any empty spaces in the field.

Then you get the guys in the middle; that space is reserved for the edible weeds and shrub varieties like clover, comfrey, and nettle. It’ll be necessary to take a look at what edible fodder grows naturally in your area. The naturally occurring weeds all thrive on neglect, and they offer a great deal of nutrition.

And very last are the sky crops, or the ones that grow high. Sunflower, wheat, and cereals. You can even add a few vining varieties to climb onto the high stalks, like cow peas and beans.

Intercropping animal feed is all about maximizing the amount of produce you can get for as little space as possible. And by keeping the varieties as varied as possible, your pigs will get a well-rounded nutritional make-up without you needing to crunch protein percentages on the calculator with every feeding.

Honorable Mentions:

And finally, let’s take a moment to look at some of the lesser-known grains. Indigenous African and South American grains have been feeding the people and their animals for thousands of years. They grow fast, and they are all disease- and drought-resistant. And all of them are so nutritious that they double as food for humans too. Most of our big animal feed crops lack in some nutritional area or another. If it’s high in energy, it’s low in nutrients. Or it’s high in vitamins and minerals but low in energy. No matter which way you turn, you’ll nearly always have to make up for some dietary need with another crop. And before you know it, you’ll be juggling a dozen different plant sorts to make up the full dietary picture you want to achieve.

As a general rule, if it was a staple crop for a society 100 years ago, it's probably going to have almost everything you need in feed with just two or three crops alone. If you can manage to get your hands on seeds from any of these ancient staple crops, you can’t pass it up. Especially the indigenous grains where you live. If it came from your country, it will grow better than anything else. It adapted and evolved to your climate, and they will always bring you the biggest harvests, for the least amount of effort.

African rice (Oryza glaberrima):

African rice isn’t the kind of rice we’re used to; it is three times higher in protein than any other rice species. It doesn't need to be flooded like Asian rice does, and it grows fabulously with other soil mates

Acha (Digitaria exilis):

Acha is an African grain commonly planted just for animal fodder. It’s higher in amino acids than wheat, barley, and rice, and it contains 9 percent crude protein.

Amaranth:

Moving on to the Americas, you might have heard us mention Amaranth in our previous videos. Again, you have a versatile plant that can serve your animals in its entirety, leaving no waste behind. It’s got all of the nutrients you need and more protein than most, while being one of the easiest crops that you can grow.

Amaranth has the biggest grain yield per head of all of the grain species, and you’ll probably end up using it in your own kitchen because you’ll be getting such huge harvests from it.

But the grains don’t stop there; the Americas are full of grains and corn that have been around for thousands of years to keep both people and animals fed.

Pod corn, flint corn, sorghum, Indian corn, and even some variations of wild rice are all still grown in South America, even if they’ve long since been phased out in the USA. Sorghum and amaranth are some of the very few that are still readily available. Sorghum, in particular, has had a recent surge in the US as a large-yielding and highly nutritious food source for both humans and livestock. But the others are just as well-rounded and high-yielding; we’ve just forgotten about them or they’re too labor-intensive to process. But your pigs aren't going to care about how tasty, hard, or raw it is; they’ll love it for the nutrients that they can get from the food placed in front of them.

Conclusion

Don’t allow conventional thinking to narrow your ideas to the point where you are under the impression that only food brought to the store is going to be an adequate food source to feed your animals. It’s only in the last hundred years that we’ve been led to believe this. But in truth, we and our livestock have survived for thousands of years without large-scale farms, GMOs, or credit cards. So why on earth do we suddenly need to resort to these mass consumption practices now?

If you have the space to grow, for the love of your healthy animals and yourself, Do it. There is no limit to what your land can provide for you. There’s an old saying in the South of Africa: If the children and the animals are not wailing, then their bellies are full. Only then does the Keeper of the Land rest, because the fields have provided everything a calm heart needs to sleep.

We hope this video gave you all of the encouragement you needed to take those crucial steps to become self-sufficient. And while you’re planning the next seasons’ field crops and selecting your seeds, why don’t you let us know what your plans are for feeding your hogs from your own soil in the comments below. Or have a look at some of our other videos on your screen right now.

Until next time. Keep learning, keep growing and never underestimate the power of the ground beneath your feet. Cheers!