Pig Farming Guide - Simple Tips to Start This Lucrative Business

Your intention is to set up a small piggery on one of your properties, so you are interested in getting your hands on a pig farming guide. You know that you cannot commit to starting a business, so instead, you raise pigs to feed yourself. Despite this condition, you still need to be familiar with certain facts and rules that can be found in a pig farming guide.

It is important that you take notes of all good points that are raised on the pig farming guide that you have read. If you do this, you won't forget anything as you go forward with your venture. Even though you won't be making money at the end of it all, you must still prioritize the health of the pigs. If you had only followed your pig farming guide religiously, you would not be eating meat that is infected with diseases that could have been prevented.

As a first step, you will need a durable pen that will serve as a shelter for your pigs. You will also need a water trough and feeder, and a stack of hay to serve as bedding for them. After the other equipment has been completed, you can buy the piglets, depending on the amount of time that you have to devote to the venture and how many you are able to handle and grow.

It can be made from hog panels or hog wire. Before you begin constructing it, make sure that you have consulted with the appropriate authorities at your location to confirm that this kind of venture is permitted on your property. The shelter must be covered and well ventilated. Get more info about fiber glass beam.

Piglets can be obtained from livestock auctions or from local farmers. Once all is set up and ready, you will have to feed the piglets appropriately and provide fresh water to them constantly.

While it may be hard at times, if you are truly committed, you will learn more about this and even decide to turn this hobby into a full-time business.

Pig farming: How to make money

Pig farmers are affected by the 'pig cycle', an important aspect of agricultural economics. It goes something like this: pigs are unsubsidised - the government doesn't 'help' producers by buying surpluses or fixing prices in any other way, for example, so, when there's not much pork around prices are good - good prices attract people into the industry, and so more pigs become available on the market which means that customers can shop around for the cheapest, which drives pigmeat prices down - lower prices mean that producers make less money from their pigs, and in an industry with very low margins (difference between the cost of producing something and how much you are paid for it) low prices easily force people to sell up - which in turn leads to reduced supply and therefore increasing prices which again attract people back into pigs. This cycle usually has peaks and troughs every three to five years. A farm business that can weather the troughs will survive long term, and if one can survive long term, one is more likely to make money off pigs. There are three ways to achieve this 'cycle-proof' business: large numbers; specialist breeding; small-scale marketing or large-scale integration. Let's take each of these steps in turn.

You will have a better chance of surviving the troughs of the pig cycle if you have a larger farm, since low margins will be spread over a larger number and large profits well invested will help you survive losses that would not be possible with fewer animals. In times of low pork prices, large numbers mean capital investments are spread out more widely and are therefore lower per animal sold, increasing the margins per animal sold. A large herd of pigs (at least 500 sows) means better buying power and therefore cheaper per pig inputs (labour, feed, medicines, equipment, straw and so on). With lots of pigs, you are more likely to survive lean times as long as you invest profits wisely. Read more about pig farm equipment.

Replacement breeding pig breeders will always make money, providing extra stock when business is good, and replacing those that go out of business, all the while selling breeding animals at a premium. As a result of supplying pigmeat into a depressed market from underperforming sows during the late eighties and early nineties, I went bankrupt in just four years, while my partner, working with a 'multiplication' unit (sow breeding), broke even in eighteen months.

If you have a small scale operation, then marketing your own product is the key to survival and profit - you have control of your product, you can butcher / process / supply customers at a premium price, and you can do so when conventional markets pay peanuts. In order to survive where others fail, a small producer needs to tap into a particular niche (rare breed pork for example), play the local card, and use Farmers Markets to command premium prices. In addition, large integrators (thousands of sows) control all aspects of production - they have maintenance departments, their own feed mills and transport fleets, and their own slaughterhouses - so they are always prepared to weather the storm.