#  >  > Living And Legal Affairs In Thailand >  >  > Farming & Gardening In Thailand >  >  very small scale pig farming.

## ChiangMai noon

I would like to buy a man pig and a girl pig and let them breed and sell the baby pigs when they are big enough to be butchered.

How many baby pigs do pigs have in a litter, period of gestation and so on.
Also, do you need pig food or will they just eat anything.
this would be good since we don't have any garbage collection at my new place.

I would imagine we could make a small profit in a year.

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## friscofrankie

Best Not CMn, I've read (and belive) that pigs are more intelligent than dogs and make fine pets.  Within a year you would be quite overrun with piglets and willing only to offer them to good homes (i.e. without barbecues)  :Very Happy:

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## ChiangMai noon

^
I had thought of that too.
 :Sad: 

I'm quite serious though.
they already have a trough at the new place and it was something that Thetyim's new white neighbour was doing.
the pen didn't seem to take up too much of his land either.

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## Begbie

You'd need to build a sty and muck it out every day plus a septic tank for the resultant pig shit. The smell isn't nice.

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## Little Chuchok

^^^Exactly what I was thinking!! You will give 'em names and start calling them all the time.Can picture it now.Can't see you putting a ring through their noses to stop 'em burrowing under a fence either.Off memory 9-13 piglets?

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## Spin

^ CMN can collect all the pig shit in a large tank and then take it to his old neighbour (dog killer) and empty it in his driveway.

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## Little Chuchok

> You'd need to build a sty and muck it out every day plus a septic tank for the resultant pig shit. The smell isn't nice.


If you build a wee hut for them,it will be relatively clean, as pigs don't shit where they sleep.Then enough room for them to run around etc.Rainy season will be fun though.....

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## ChiangMai noon

So the pigs don't eat their own shit then?
 :Sad:

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## Begbie

^^^or through his letterbox.

Forget the stye, you're up on stilts just tie them up under the house. The locals will think a bunch of hilltribes have moved in.

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## Little Chuchok

^^Nope.clean little buggers really.

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## ChiangMai noon

say an average litter of 12 when are they ready to be sold on, 50 kilos, 100 kilos?
when can the female have a new litter and how much do you sell a kilo for?

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## Little Chuchok

Dunno how big the pigs get here.What are you gonna feed them?How much is that gonna cost.Food scraps from 2 people ain't going to make the grade.

I suppose you could go around all the restaurants every night getting the left overs and scraps.Buy a little truck,or better still have a wee trailer made for your bike. I can see it now..."CMn,The Pig Man." :Smile:

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## ChiangMai noon

^
that's why this forum is so useful.
I don't like to do much independant research.
google has never been my friend.

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## in4zip

out of the pig poo you can go high tech and make biogas but prolly you'll need more than a couple of hogs to produce enough methane for anything more serious than your cigarette lighter  :Smile:

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## watterinja

Could you kill this pig, Cmn?   :Sad:

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## ChiangMai noon

cheers wattie.
thread closed.

 :France:

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## sledge

CMn I have just asked the missus. She said check that the mummy pig is strong and that the pappa pig has good sperm. I'll leave that up to you how you decide on that. Should have 6,8,10 or 12 little ones. Also be careful because the fuukin father pig will eat the little ones so need to move him when they're still little. They also eat human shit so you'll be able to crap outside and they'll clean up for you. (septic tank won't need to emptied so often) You could also have a fish pond and the fish will thrive on the pig shit. I can see plenty of positives.

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## ChiangMai noon

^
thanks sledge

that's definitely the most constructive response so far.
anyone else?

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## buad hai

^I've done this. You don't want to do it. Theoretically they will eat anything, but you probably need to boil table scraps and other garbage or they will get sick. You can buy food, but then you might as well buy pork in the market rather than going to the trouble of turning grain into pigs and pig shit. We used to feed them coconuts to save money on feed. Ever try husking a half dozen coconuts per pig per day? Not much fun....

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## ChiangMai noon

^
thanks Bh

if you've done it, you'll know the gestation period.
how long is it?

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## buad hai

^three months.

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## blackgang

raising pigs is a pain in the ass, all kinds of special shit, like you have to have a low railing in the pen so the little pigs can get under it so the sow don't lay on em and smash em.
Have to have a lot of feed and pig feed is spendy and garbage hogs have trichinosis if you don't cook all the garbage, corn can be had fairly cheap, but you will have to grind it and soak it to ferment so it will digest or they just shit it out.
One pig for a pet is OK I guess.
When I worked down in the tropics of Mexico we used to shit out in the brush and there would always be a couple of hogs hanging around to clean it up as soon as you was done, nasty bastards really, but as has been said, they are clean as Far as shitting in the place they live, they all shit in the same corner of the pen so it is easy to shovel over the fence, but is quite aromatic.
and you should butcher at around 70 KG.

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## buriramboy

CMN my advice would be to give it a miss, i (the in-laws) have been doing it for a couple of years now and at the moment the price of pork is so low you won't even break even. Anyway gestation period is just over 4 months, i have had litters ranging from as low as 5 and up to 14. If your plan was just to breed and sell the piglets, the piglets have to be weened for 42 days before you can take them away from the mother and you will be lucky to get 500 baht per piglet at the moment where as 18 months ago you were getting 1200 baht.
Concerning a sty, i originaly had built a 9m X 3m sty divided into 3 lots of 3m X 3m, concrete floor, brick walls and a tin roof, cost was somewhere between 12 and 15k, can't remember, anyway doubled it up so now have 6  3m X 3m pens. After the pigs have been weened you have to seperate the males and females if you are planning to fatten them up, again with food costs you won't break even at the moment, after fattening them up 6-8 months i (the misses, i never saw f-all) used to get 5k++ a pig, now you will be lucky to get 3k.
Also if you really want to do it and i would advise against it, but 2 females and not a male and female and just get the sows fucked by another local pig. You can just about get 2 litters a year as 4 1/2 month gestation period, ween for 6 weeks, then when the sows start whining they are ready to get fucked again.

Hope this helps.

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## ChiangMai noon

> Hope this helps.


very much, thank you.
excellent advice.

and thanks to blackgang too.

wasn't there a poster on here 'fingersinpies' that was a successful pig farmer.
probably had more than 2 of them in the corner of his garden though.

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## buad hai

I stand corrected: 


> The length of the sow's gestation is 3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days.

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## watterinja

Pigs will break out of any enclosure other than a very secure setup. They are super smart.

I have visions of Cmn running around the village crying:

"Porky, porky.... where are you porky?"

 :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):

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## ChiangMai noon

^
not likely.
all my animals are named after Indian or Pakistani cricketers.

where are you saurav ganguly is more likely.
 :Smile:

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## dirtydog

> all my animals are named after Indian or Pakistani cricketers.


Why? do you have something against Indians and Pakistanis?

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## buad hai

^He just wants to make sure they don't eat each other.

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## blackgang

Tell ya what, I got a friend up at Phayo that raises them by the bunch, I will ask him what it takes and how much you make, but he does it commercial, least wise used to.
Then I will post what he says.. :Smile:

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## buad hai

I've had an additional thought. One of the side benefits of pig farming is that you get huge quantities of excellent fertilizer. I used to shovel it daily into my wheelbarrow and then dump it on the papayas. Although I could never bring myself to eat any of the pigs we raised, the papayas (Kauai Sunrise -- the best) provided oodles of wonderful fresh fruit daily throughout the year.

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## sabang

I can't tell you anything about pig rearing, but I have some experience of home farming.

I lived on 12 acres in the Adelaide Hills, including a dam with year round water, and part of my reason for moving there (from hectic HK) was to practise this romantic notion of partial self sufficiency, with the able assistance of my wife.
So at various times, sometimes concurrently, we:-

Raised Scottish Highland cows, but 3 cows and a calf on 12 acres is too much for the land when summer comes. They denuded the land, stripped trees, barged down small trees all over the place. I had to buy them hay to supplement their feed- and of course in summer hay is at it's most expensive. Plus they were hard on the fences- they'd lean against them to access food outside the property. A few times they brought the fence down enough to escape, fortunately to a walking track that ran past the property. Real fun getting skittish cows back inside, especially when they didn't want too. Had to spend a fair bit of money getting fences upgraded and maintained too- the locals who knew what they were about did this for themselves, but what does a HK expat know about this. After just over a year I sold them at a healthy loss, feed and fencing costs considered. :bunny3: 

Sheep- I agisted sheep for a local farmer. What fun. Bloody escape artists those sheep. They escaped a few times, one time about 40 of them out on the road. Another time two of them were savaged by dogs, three more panicked and drowned in the dam. Then there was fly strike- technically the farmers fault, he should've had them crutched, but oh the horror of collecting fly blown carcasses and putting others out of their misery. Not worth it for the pittance it paid.  :Aussie: 

Grew our own veggies. Nothing to report- most just didn't work. What pathetic remnants survived were eaten by cows and sheep. in the end I gave up trying to keep them out of the garden- hungry cows then Houdini sheep, forget it. A total wipe out, except for rosemary and our chili bushes, which were finally consumed by-

Geese. Well at least this was succesful, in a way. A local mate gave me a breeding couple (geese are monagamous). They bred, and five out of six survived. The other was taken by a fox I guess. But our dog protected the goslings- for which it was constantly attacked by the vicious goose and gander, poor thing. They shat everywhere, and goose shit stinks. They used to like to sleep under the westside verandah- I gave up on shooing them away, they just came back, so my study looked out on a sea of shit. Had to buy them food of course. Took the adolescents to a local processing plant, ended up with five roastable geese that probably cost me more than if I had gone and bought them. Gave the breeding couple back to me mate, who was quite impressed with my and their breeding record- I had done better than him, and he had a few geese.  :nerner: 

Short story- Other than growing things and maybe rearing chickens, do it for love not money.  :Smile:

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## watterinja

Cmn's sprog in 6 months' time... with Gertrude...

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## Thetyim

How about those small birds that look like Quails and lay lots of eggs.
The price of eggs has gone up recently so the price of quails eggs should have gone up as well.

The bird shit can be used to feed the pla duk in your pond so you have two products but only have to buy food for the birds.

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## Spin

> They are super smart.


Damn, maybe they can be trained to drive bangkok taxis or buses :bunny3:

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## watterinja

^ The Thai Pigs Union outlawed such menial work...

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## blackgang

OK here is what my friend said about your idea.

Yep, sounds feasible. Like other animals, one boar can service a lot of
females - so a lot of small farmers here don't own a boar, they take there
lady pigs to get serviced for a fee - worth checking this out locally - what
do the natives do.

standard litter is 8, but varies considerably from 4 to 14. Gestation is 10
weeks. Yep, adult pigs can eat anything, swill boiled up, old rice,
anything. However, once they are weaned after 6 weeks or so, best to get a
propriatory feed for about a month to get them a good start. With 600 pigs,
we use bought-in animal feed.

We market our pigs at the 5 month stage, 70 kilo or so, but again, this
varies considerably.
>Most Tambons will have a 'pig man' who'll do slaughtering etc... check out
>what happens locally.
Brian.

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## MeMock

A lot of work CMN.

Need a decent sty.

Need to supplement the scraps with good feed.

Anywhere between 6-12 piglets.

I am assuming you wont want then right next to your house because of the smell. If that is the case what about security?

Around 35 baht per kg at the moment down from 45 a year ago.

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## blackgang

My friend has his pig farm a long ways from his home, same with his chicken sheds, he did get his ISO cert.
I know that I sure as hell wouldn't want a pig farm in my local area, cows is smelly enough where they spend the night away from the house out back.

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## ChiangMai noon

^
thanks for the research blackgang.
i'm confused about the gestation period though.
is it 4 months or 10 weeks?

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## buad hai

> i'm confused about the gestation period though.
> is it 4 months or 10 weeks?


Wikipedia said 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days. I guess God got lazy when he was passing out gestation periods and figured he'd just go with 3-3-3 for pigs.

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## ChiangMai noon

^
yet blackgang's pig farming friend says it is 10 weeks.

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## blackgang

But he corrected that to official gestation is 115 days, so must have made a mistake, but I only have bought weaner pigs since I have been away from the ranch as a kid, and we just bought em, fed em to 50 or so kilo and had em butchered for the freezer.

Sorry about the days of gestation, I didn't notice the correction til just now..

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## buad hai

Well, I originally posted three months because that's what I thought I remembered. Looked it up and found my brain is indeed failing....

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## The_Dude

CMN,
7-10 pigs average. And about size it matters if the hog is large. You may want to just have 2-3 females and get stud service from a large hog. My wife knows of a German that has a succesful business. He owns very large hogs that Thais are very jealous of becouse they can't grow them that large. But as the above BM's mentioned it can be hard work. Very messy guys I remember giving dry feed and adding water to the mix as you feed them they all try hoard the food stall as you feed them then pour water into the stall but lands on thier heads maybe I should have mixed the stuff with water first? :Sad:  Smell of piss every where and don't forget the flies!!! I'll send some pics so you get the idea. If you design the stall correctly you will be OK. You may want to check out some facilities to understand what you atre up against. If you want I can get you some addresses. Oh yeah it's about 4 months after they boom sing when you see the little piggys.

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## El Gibbon

> I would like to buy a man pig and a girl pig and let them breed and sell the baby pigs when they are big enough to be butchered.
> 
> How many baby pigs do pigs have in a litter, period of gestation and so on.
> Also, do you need pig food or will they just eat anything.
> this would be good since we don't have any garbage collection at my new place.
> 
> I would imagine we could make a small profit in a year.


CMN

There is a thread on TV, run by one of our own TD members, about farming in Thailand. There is all the information you would ever want to know about raising and selling pigs. Search the thread. (its the only reason I've ever used TV). There are a ton of folks there that really know their shit when it comes to pigs and farming in general.

From what I've read it is a losing proposition. By the time you get done with  meds (required for piglets), food, water, air movement etc. etc. the price of pork on the market doesn't begin to recoup your costs.

No personal experience but there is a bunch that have/are trying to make a "small profit" on there. If its a hobby for your own enjoyment Ok, for profit its a bad deal.

E. G.

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## sabang

[quote=El Gibbon;
If its a hobby for your own enjoyment Ok, for profit its a bad deal.

E. G.[/quote]

Yep.  :Wink:

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## stroller

There are easier options for hobby-farming: get a small pond dug, if there isn't one already, PlaDuk are extremely easy to keep, you buy them by the hundreds as little babies and they're big enough to eat in 2 months if you feed them well.
Again, profit will be minimal if you do it commercially, but we are eating some ourselves, and _retail_ some to neighbours.

Ducks are easy to keep as well and fun.

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## shazbut

Get a few piggies,get a smoker and make some decent bacon.

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## blackgang

^ Best idea yet,,

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## Boon Mee

> There are easier options for hobby-farming: get a small pond dug, if there isn't one already, PlaDuk are extremely easy to keep, you buy them by the hundreds as little babies and they're big enough to eat in 2 months if you feed them well.
> Again, profit will be minimal if you do it commercially, but we are eating some ourselves, and _retail_ some to neighbours.
> 
> Ducks are easy to keep as well and fun.


I've got a lot of water left on the wife's property I was going to fill in but this sounds like a good idea.  The mosquitoe problem was putting me off having a lot of standing water around but if you have fish in them, I've heard it's not too bad?

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## blackgang

We have about 7 rai lake and we are not bothered with mossies here, coarse we got a lot of fish in it..
But Ducks are bad about having H5N1 from what I hear, so no ducks for us, and only a couple of chickens running around the place.

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## stroller

The fish eat the mosquitoes, in fact I switch on a light over the basin (we don't have a pond) for a couple of hours in the evening, to attract mossies and other insects.

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## Thetyim

> The mosquito problem was putting me off having a lot of standing water around but if you have fish in them, I've heard it's not too bad?


Mosquito larvae live in the water, don't bite you and make good fish food for fingerlings.
Mosquitoes live in  vegetation and bite.

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## stroller

We have about 100 of these in there:

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## blackgang

Wifey got a couple of clay pots out in her new landscaped front yard with some water plants growing in em and a lot of small fish, she says it attracts the skeeters and the fish eat em,, maybe struth as far as I know.

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## Texpat

This being Thailand and all ... What if your sow's a tom or your boy pig likes pork pecker? Be prepared to buy a third or forth squealer to consumate production.

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## blackgang

Coarse you could just get a girl pig and fuck her your self too.

But then you would be selling your children to strangers, kind of like some people do.

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## obsidian

i would think the profit would be better from large pigs rather than very small ones.

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## stroller

There's the time-element. They grow fastest when they're very young.

The chickens you let just roam the land until they're fully grown, you don't need to spend money on food and you don't need to do anything for them.

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## Texpat

'Cept buy little cough-masks to cover their beaks, and gloves to wear when you're burying the dead ones.

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## stroller

I am not a hysteric seppo who'd panic from all the media hype.  :Smile: 

Our chickens and ducks are doing fine.

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## watterinja

Stuff happens... apparently pseudo-rabies... Got the poor cat as well...  :Sad:

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## ChiangMai noon

ok.
I've basically been talked out of this little venture by you lot.
thanks for all the help.
it has been interesting reading.

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## stroller

Goats are a different story, though, or a couple o' buffaloes!  :Smile:

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## watterinja

Goats are tough little beggars, but squeal like a baby when you need to inject them. They also have an odd smell.

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## Thetyim

> I've basically been talked out of this little venture by you lot.


Why don't you try sheep.
You probably won't make much profit from selling them but the commercial possibilities of making some movies could be very profitable.       :cmn:

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## ChiangMai noon

^
fishing for greenies again ya English bastard.
 :kma:

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## benbaaa

Glad you've seen the error of your ways, CMN.  I know a lot about pigs having watched Hannibal and Snatch.






> (discussing the best way to rid yourself of a dead body)
> 
> And then I hear the best thing to do is feed 'em to pigs. You gotta starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped up body looks like curry to a drunk. You gotta shave the heads of your victims and pull the teeth out, you could do that after of course, but you don't want to go sieving pig shit do you? Ever seen the size of one of their molars?
> 
>  They go through bone like it's butter. You gotta have a few pigs though you need about sixteen they will go through a body that weighs two hundred pounds in about eight minutes that means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute...
> 
> Hence the expression, "greedy as a pig".

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## stroller

Certainly a less air-polluting alternative to the traditional cremation ritual.

An ecological enterprise for the future.

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## Sir Burr

The Jains in India do it with vultures in Sky Burials.

I remember there was some nutty English Lord that was fighting in the courts for the right to have his body chopped up and fed to the stray dogs in Battersea Dogs Home.
Don't think he won the case though.

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## shazbut

Threw a dead sheep into a pig pen years ago to see what would happen.Pure carnage.First large sow,buried her head in the sheeps guts and then flicked the sheep in the air like a rag doll.Then they were all into it like err..umm.."pigs into shit" :Smile:  next day,there was NOTHING left!!!

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## stroller

I somehow doubt the Welsh guy would have the guts to run a body-disposal service for the guys in CM who matter.  :Smile:

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## sailorr13

> Goats are tough little beggars, but squeal like a baby when you need to inject them. They also have an odd smell.


You have any idea where to buy a couple of goats in chiang mai?

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## DrAndy

Loy Kroh has plenty

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## IsaanAussie

Hi all,

Just jumped over from TV and decided the first pig farning thread was the place to post as a newbie to TD. So after reading the previous entries I thought it was time to update the pig scene.
Most farming types in Isaan will have noticed the new stys being built this year. Money not Muck time in Thailand for pig farmers they all thought. True, it has been a very good period for those who understand the seasonality of the market. Pig and pork prices are down from their highs. Reason? Lent, no-one was eating pork but everyone wanted to sell finished pigs...
Now it is still not to late to buy in some piglets and grow them out for sale in the new year. Prices will improve over Dec-Jan and peak in August. As they usually do. 

Isaan Aussie

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