I just picked up these two girls last weekend:
I'm known to be about the most efficient (ahem, read: stingy) guy around these parts, so it drives me crazy feeding grains from the feed store, but like you say in another post... if that's what's needed, so be it. The girls came from a confinement building where they were eating corn/soymeal blend. They're about 100 pounds each right now, and I've been feeding them 2 # a day each of soy/cracked corn/oats blended equally which comes out to about 14% protein- right about the recommended level. But, they're on pasture too, where I've got legumes, rye, and oats pretty thick. Like you, I'll definitely throw something in behind them to seed, and plan to feed fruits and squashes...
Anyway, what troubles me about their feed is that I see what comes out they're back end looks a lot like what goes in the front end, they pretty much don't digest much of the corn at all, and, well, like I said, I'm stingy so that really bothers me. Not to mention, a lot of their feed ends up on the ground. I really like the idea of that trough that Youngblood casts out of concrete, but I see them little girls just pushing their food and water out onto the ground again. I started with one of these:
Seems like it works ok but it's too big for them to get their head in at this size unless I tip it on its side, and the little Tamworth just gets in it and lays down and eats; won't let the Berkie in. So I added an old tray for Berkie to eat out of:
Like wise, a lot of this ends up on the ground. My quick answer is putting some birds in there to clean up the ground but I'd like to just be more efficient all in all. I think I might make some mini- v-bottomed troughs for them, one for each one, and mount them to their little A-frame shelter so they can't knock them around too much.
As for water, the reason I asked is because I bought one of those Trojan auto watering devices and mounted it to an old plastic barrel:
Trojan makes two kinds, one that attaches to a hose, like from a faucet, and one that is gravity feed. I ordered the gravity feed one. Trouble is, it dribbles water out so slow... I think maybe they sent me the wrong one, but I'm afraid I can't send it back because I already got the adhesive all over it where it goes onto the barrel. (I didn't get adhesive in the line, I already checked that). SO, long story short, I'm wondering if anyone else has experience with these gravity waterers, maybe this thing is working right and I'm just paranoid. Just want my girls to be fat and happy! Otherwise, I really like the barrel idea. All my rain water goes into big horse tanks, so I can just fill the pig's water up from the rain tank.
As for the feed, I'm gonna check out that book that George recommends in his other post. Hopefully they got it down at the library.
EDIT: I don't know why those last three pictures are showing up sideways??? Hope you get the idea.
I'm glad that nature took the turn that was intended.
