Salatin's books mention that he mixed pig feed in with straw bedding and lets it all pile up over the winter. Then turns pigs loose on the pile. The pigs root for the pig feed, turning all the compost.

I have to wonder if the pigs do a decent job of turning the compost. I also have to wonder how healthy this is for the pig and how the meat turns out.

Anybody tried this?

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), March 11, 2001

Answers

We didn't even mix feed in. Pigs are just as happy chasing worms, it seems. We dumped the stuff out in windrows in the garden, a little at a time through the winter, and in the spring, fenced around it with stock panels. We also added a single strand of electric about a foot up, on the inside of the pen, to keep them from rooting a hole under the fence. They did a fantastic job of churning everything in. We didn't even have to plow, we just tilled to finish loosening things up, and planted. Everything grew like gangbusters. The meat was delicious. As far as the health question, we didn't see so much as a sniffle, though I would recommend being sure to keep up on your worming program.

-- Connie (Connie@lunehaven.com), March 11, 2001.

As to health, cattle manure has been found to be an almost ideal vitamin and mineral supplement for hogs.

Joel says it tastes delicious and I'll take his word for it.

At one time it was a fairly standard practice for hogs to be used to remove stumps. Holes would be poked under large roots and corn poured in. In rooting to get to the corn, the pigs would eventually uproot the stump to the point it could be pulled out with horses, mules or oxen.

Joel has also used them to clear land by fencing them into an area and pretty well letting them destroy everything in it and in rotational grazing by putting them in a portable pen which is pulled forward over a pasture by a tractor.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), March 12, 2001.