FEEDING ONE SLOW???

Basic nutrition information, show pig, sow, and boar feeding advice
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Pigsouth90
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FEEDING ONE SLOW???

Post by Pigsouth90 » Sun Sep 15, 2019 11:57 am

I hear ppl talking about buying a pig that is slightly older and feeding it "slow". What exactly does that mean? Is that referring to starting with a lower protein but same ration or just a lower ration. the way I understand it we are talking a 1.25 lb. Per day gain?

mjw1980
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Re: FEEDING ONE SLOW???

Post by mjw1980 » Tue Sep 17, 2019 12:40 pm

Feeding one slow is not pushing the pig to gain weight as quick. Some people like to buy a pig that will be 6mo old at show time. This generally means they dont have to worry about weight as much. If you buy an older pig say a 7mo old at show time, you may need to start hand feeding earlier so that you do not bust weight or have to hold hard at the end.

You can do this by starting to mix a fully fortified holding ration along with your base feed. For instance you can feed 3lbs of base feed 2 times a day and you will generally avg 2lbs a day. That 6lbs will meet the nutritional requirements for most pigs up to a certain weight.

You can feed a mixture of base feed and a good holding ration and feed 3lbs day and that will let the pig gain an avg of 1lb and also meet the pigs nutritional requirements. You can add groats into the mixture to make the portion size larger and the pig feel fuller.

If you feed a 200lb pig 3lbs of base feed a day that pig will become stale and start going downhill because the base feed does not have the nutrients to support a pig that size.

Hope my information helps. There are people on here who are great feeders and may have comments or additions to what I have said.

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