Hogs

Hogs

I have long been interested in the use of pastures for domesticated livestock.  So, recently, on the way to visit a new friend, I drove by a field of pastured hogs.  On the way back, and a couple of times since, I observed the hogs and their pasture.  About fifteen hogs were lounging on ten acres of creek bottomland.  The fencing was heavier and presumably more expensive than cattle fencing.  The pasture was in grass which the hogs were not eating.  At the farmhouse end of the pasture the hogs had made a single circular depression of bare dirt about 30 ft. across and a couple of feet deep.  Is it called a wallow?  We’ve been dry and the bottom was only moist.

My thoughts are these.  Plow the field and sow legumes, wheat or barley in the fall.  Graze with cattle, plow under, or harvest the crop and then spring sow a substantial quantity and mix of root crops, mangels, daikons, turnips, rutabegas, radishes and carrots.  In fall let the hogs in.  Every few days, come behind them rake and sow more daikons or begin to sow for the development of a permanent pasture.

Once the hogs have worked the field over, pen them or sell them.  The field goes back to the rotation for cattle, horses, sheep whichever.  In the meantime you have a different field being prepared for the next hog pasture.  Perhaps your hog wire could be moved from field to field.

It seems to me that the kind of “cultivation” that hogs can achieve is unique and beneficial for the pasture and with minimal tillage over a loosened top soil this pasture can be re-established with the certainty of plant vigor.

As a footnote I would like to add that the grain required by your hogs can be barley instead of corn.  Both the hogs I raised many years ago were fed rolled barley soaked in nutrients.  Sprouting barley has been very easy for me to do and the hogs benefit even more from that. 

Barley appears not to be gmo, is not likely to be heavily poisoned and is half the price of organic feed.