I've got several concerns about keeping gramniverous stock (although I love my chickens and pigs), most importantly:
1. Feed price fluctuations: Grains are commodities, traded Worldwwide. Like every commodity, the only winners in grain are the traders. Price fluctuations and currency variations combine to make an unhedgeable risk for a business on our scale.
2. Even if price was OK, the Transport Waste is unacceptable. I want my animals to be fed from local feed ideally, and certainly not from feed which has been imported from the other side of the world.
3. Even if price was OK, the Overprocessing Waste is unacceptable. Grain is typically grown in a monocultural system, poor soil kept on life support by chemicals. Totally unsustainable.
The above combine to make keeping pigs and chickens as I currently keep them unsustainable.
Ideally I'd like to 'grow my own' pig & chicken feed, and have considered several 'free' foods which I can probably gather already from Tymawr-Farm, or establish here over time:
| Protein | Fat | Carbohydrate | |
| Ideal Pig Food | 17% | 4% | 34% |
| Acorns | 7% | 25% | 42% |
| Walnuts | 15% | 65% | 14% |
| Hazelnuts | 15% | 61% | 17% |
| Apples | 0% | 0% | 14% |
| Pears | 0% | 0% | 15% |
| Jerusalem Artichokes | 2% | 0% | 17% |
| Sweetcorn (on the cob) | 4% | 2% | 22% |
| Skimmed Milk | 3% | 0% | 5% |
The 'Ideal Pig Food' percentages come from very roughly (with my finger!) measuring a chart in the very interesting http://www2.hawaii.edu/~halina/201/pigc.pdf [accessed on 5.12.2012]. All the other data comes from http://skipthepie.org// [accessed on 05.12.2012].
The most obvious issue with a home-made pig feed, when compared with a commercial 'concentrated feed' is how to provide the required amount of protein. However, I guess the thing to remember is that 'normal' pig feeds, as their name suggests, are concentrated. SO, it may be quite possible to feed twice (or even more) the weight of 'free' food, to give the same nutritional value. Unfortunately, in these 'free' foods, protein seems to be fairly closely proportional to fat, which in the 'ideal pig food' makeup is fairly low. It seems that nutritionally the pigs ideal food is something like steak and pasta! Maybe if we're keeping the pigs outside 'free-range' or inside in relatively spacious pens (depending on the weather conditions), that more fat in the feed is acceptable (i.e. our pigs will burn that fat faster than a 'sedentary' industrially farmed pig!).
Nature walk on Friday to see what free feed I can spot for my next batch of weaners!
No comments:
Post a Comment