STORE PIGS

Waipa Post, Volume 43, Issue 3328, 28 July 1931, Page 3

STORE PIGS

TREATMENT IN WINTER.

The satisfactory feeding of growing pigs during winter, when skim milk or whey is not available, has ’up to the present beeh exceedingly difficult. So much so, indeed, that many farmers avoid autumn farrowing or make no effort to carry store pigs through the winter. The unsatisfactory position of the autumn litter is well known.

In order to put pig rearing on a satisfactory basis it is essential that the number of pigs marketed per sow should be increased to at least 12. by making the production from late summer and autumn farrowing as efficient as in spring farrowing. The only way that this can be done, is to carry through the winter all autumn litters' in a healthy and thriving condition so that when dairy byproducts become available they can be rapidly and profitably converted into pork or bacon (says the New Zealand Dairyman). All dairy farmers can provide at an extremely cheap rate an abundance of roots, particularly mangels, for the feedings of store pigs. Mangels, however, by themselves can be viewed as quite useless for the wintering of young pigs, but when supplemented with a flesh-forming food are perfectly satisfactory for the efficient wintering' of young pigs from nhe weaner stage onwards. Up till quite recently, however, an efficient and reasonably priced flesh-forming food for winter feeding was not available to the pig raiser, and this was the prime reason why the unsatisfactory position of the wintering of store pigs arose. The pig farmer has now fortunately at his command an extremely efficient flesh-forming food in the shape of meat-meal, which at the price being charge namely, somewhere about £ll to £l2 per ton, can be viewed in combination with roots such as mangels as sufficiently cheap to make the wintering of young pigs effective and profitable. Mr Scott, of Lincoln College (N.Z.). in a feeding experiment, showed that with meat-meal fed at the rate of Jib. per day in conjunction with mangels, young pigs made satisfactory and profitable winter gains. So important was the result of this experiment viewed by the Department of Agriculture that it was decided to carry out a series of trials in co-operation with farmers to find out exactly wha live weight increases took place when young pigs were fed through the winter simply with farm grown roots supplemented with Jib. meat-meal per pig per day and under ordinary farm conditions. . Trials with mangels and meat-meal by enabling autumn litters to be as profitable if not more so than those spring farrowed. Every pound spend on meat-meal for the wintering of pigs would appear to be capable of returning £4, provided adequate quantities of farm grown roots are available and management conditions are reasonably 8 Very valuable work can be accomplished by persuading farmers o adopt the meat-meal plus farm grown roots system of winter young growing pigs, and every endeavour should be made to make the practice general throughout the country. In point of fact the practice would have value beyond that of the profitable wintering of pigs itself, inasmuch as it would greatly increase the value of the root crop and tend to encourage all farmers to have on hand adequate supplies of roots for the winter feeding of cows, thereby increasing the value of hay or ensilage fed during the winter.

Meat-meal feeding of young growing pigs during the winter can be viewed as a standard approved practice.