what are pigs typically fed in Ireland?

silverharp

are they still fed a barley based diet? I couldn't find a quick answer but did stumble over some IT articles where barley producers here were complaining that not enough of their produce was being bought in favour of imported replacements?
in certain nutrition circles its thought that the more traditional European pork is superior to US pork because pigs are what they eat and that barley is superior to the US corn,soya etc fed pigs.

yosemitesam1

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.nuffieldinternational.org/rep_pdf/1409759688Michelle-Sprent-report-2013.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiUs-zeosTmAhUKM8AKHT_cCVwQFjABegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw0b9ENJef3l6nxBWigJkmvS

_Brian

The big point to remember that pigs aren’t like cattle or sheep.

They can’t be pasture fed same as cattle.

They need access to a high protein food.

silverharp

_Brian wrote: »

The big point to remember that pigs aren’t like cattle or sheep.

They can’t be pasture fed same as cattle.

They need access to a high protein food.

that's why im curious, pigs and chickens are "what they eat" more so than more typical pasture fed animals.

punisher5112

Use to work in Tayto years ago and any food waste was collected in huge skips.... This would then be taken and used as pig feed....

I'm sure it's still done.

tayto lover

punisher5112 wrote: »

Use to work in Tayto years ago and any food waste was collected in huge skips.... This would then be taken and used as pig feed....

I'm sure it's still done.

I’m not a pig 🐷.

WrenBoy

Apparently the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion.
You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig ****, now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig."

Guffy

punisher5112 wrote: »

Use to work in Tayto years ago and any food waste was collected in huge skips.... This would then be taken and used as pig feed....

I'm sure it's still done.

EU put an end to this unfortunately.

punisher5112

Guffy wrote: »

EU put an end to this unfortunately.

Oh so it's no more, just remember it been collected along with the oil....

Buford T. Justice XIX

silverharp wrote: »

that's why im curious, pigs and chickens are "what they eat" more so than more typical pasture fed animals.

Pigs are monogastric animals, similar to ourselves and so lack the ability to produce certain amino acids which have to be supplied in their diets to the recommended levels or growth and peformance drop. Crucial dietary factors not being available when having a limited dietary range is also the limiting factor in suitability of some diets for human consumption. They also are limited to mostly processed grain as they wouldn't have the correct biome or physical structures to process whole grain efficiently.

Poultry are similar but have a gizzard to breakdown certain like grains to help release the energy and protein structures in grains and forages to help provide dietary balance.

djmc

Pigs are feed on mainly wheat barley and soya bean meal milled together with minerals and maybe at times some other stuff like maize meal soya oil, whey or beet pulp depending on the price of ingredients and the stage the pig is at in its life cycle.

degsie

Dáil dinners.....I'll get me coat

banie01

Bodies, at least round my way anyway...
Lots of people go missing with ne'er a trace!
And if pigs are good enough for Bricktop, they're good enough for me!

_Brian

silverharp wrote: »

that's why im curious, pigs and chickens are "what they eat" more so than more typical pasture fed animals.

Sometimes it’s how they are reared as much as what they eat.

Ours aren’t on slats and we have a fenced area they have free access to. The roam and root, getting lots of grubs roots etc.

We feed a high protein feed plus rolled barley. They get waste veg, bread too.

We kill at a much later stage too, typically 9 months old.

So, though they get a commercial feed their lifestyle is quite different and so the taste is nothing like commercial pork/bacon.

We don’t breed our own, buying in piglets at 8-10 weeks from small scale breeders.

It’s only for our table so usually 3 at a time.

uck51js9zml2yt

_Brian wrote: »

Sometimes it’s how they are reared as much as what they eat.

Ours aren’t on slats and we have a fenced area they have free access to. The roam and root, getting lots of grubs roots etc.

We feed a high protein feed plus rolled barley. They get waste veg, bread too.

We kill at a much later stage too, typically 9 months old.

So, though they get a commercial feed their lifestyle is quite different and so the taste is nothing like commercial pork/bacon.

We don’t breed our own, buying in piglets at 8-10 weeks from small scale breeders.

It’s only for our table so usually 3 at a time.

Any chance of some photos of your set up Brian?

yosemitesam1

_Brian wrote: »

Sometimes it’s how they are reared as much as what they eat.

Ours aren’t on slats and we have a fenced area they have free access to. The roam and root, getting lots of grubs roots etc.

We feed a high protein feed plus rolled barley. They get waste veg, bread too.

We kill at a much later stage too, typically 9 months old.

So, though they get a commercial feed their lifestyle is quite different and so the taste is nothing like commercial pork/bacon.

We don’t breed our own, buying in piglets at 8-10 weeks from small scale breeders.

It’s only for our table so usually 3 at a time.

Think the op may be coming at this from the point of view pigs fed maize/soya diet would be higher in potentially inflammation causing oils compared to pigs who derive a greater % of their fat from converting starch to fat

_Brian

Jillian Massive Wristband wrote: »

Any chance of some photos of your set up Brian?

Sure
It’s empty at the moment, it hopefully have pigs once we get January over.

awaywithyou

surprised no one has mentioned doughnuts....:D

Nekarsulm

Guffy wrote: »

EU put an end to this unfortunately.

Perhaps they did, perhaps they didn't ....

KatyMac

If you were rearing pigs for yourself, could you feed them food waste. I presume that was only for commercial set ups that was stopped. I've often thought of getting a couple for the house. I know of a neighbour doing that (don't know what the feeds them). He keeps them in a field fenced with several strands of electric wire with a mobile pig ark, moves the whole set up round the field. Grows veg in it afterwards - patch is 'ploughed' and manured and beautifully set.

gingernut79

Commercially produced pig feed is usually mainly a mix of wheat, barley and soya, with minerals vitamins and amino acids added.

Buford T. Justice XIX

KatyMac wrote: »

If you were rearing pigs for yourself, could you feed them food waste. I presume that was only for commercial set ups that was stopped. I've often thought of getting a couple for the house. I know of a neighbour doing that (don't know what the feeds them). He keeps them in a field fenced with several strands of electric wire with a mobile pig ark, moves the whole set up round the field. Grows veg in it afterwards - patch is 'ploughed' and manured and beautifully set.

No food waste! There's a real danger of African Swine Fever being passed on from feeding infected food scraps to pigs. ASF is fairly close to the German border at this stage and it looks like just a matter of time before it crosses and infects the German swine herd.
With free travel across the EU, a scrap of eastern European pork coming in here with ASF would be lethal.

_Brian

Buford T. Justice VI wrote: »

No food waste! There's a real danger of African Swine Fever being passed on from feeding infected food scraps to pigs. ASF is fairly close to the German border at this stage and it looks like just a matter of time before it crosses and infects the German swine herd.
With free travel across the EU, a scrap of eastern European pork coming in here with ASF would be lethal.

My feeling on this is the intensive rearing of pigs will be their downfall, they have no herd immunity to anything, living in close quarters with no immunity will leave them no defence when it arrives.
As an island nation we should be protected but ASF has been detected on foods illegally imported to NI already.

148multi

KatyMac wrote: »

If you were rearing pigs for yourself, could you feed them food waste. I presume that was only for commercial set ups that was stopped. I've often thought of getting a couple for the house. I know of a neighbour doing that (don't know what the feeds them). He keeps them in a field fenced with several strands of electric wire with a mobile pig ark, moves the whole set up round the field. Grows veg in it afterwards - patch is 'ploughed' and manured and beautifully set.

Anything that goes through a kitchen can't be fed to pigs, I think it's worded like that anyway,. It's the smaller setups they are afraid of.

ganmo

_Brian wrote: »

My feeling on this is the intensive rearing of pigs will be their downfall, they have no herd immunity to anything, living in close quarters with no immunity will leave them no defence when it arrives.
As an island nation we should be protected but ASF has been detected on foods illegally imported to NI already.

From what I've heard most of the pig production in china is small scale back garden type so not very intensive, and it's going through the wild boar population in eastern Europe too so in this case the intensive nature of pig production isn't a factor

NovemberWren

awaywithyou wrote: »

surprised no one has mentioned doughnuts....:D

extremely common misconception this.

very wrong to ascribe gardai this way.

this originally was the Spartans who, deliberately, lived on the roughest, meagrest, unseasoned, diet; that even the extremely impoverished would not ingest.
As, gastronomy to the Spartans was to be derided. Just as they derided the lavish gastronomy of the Persians.
Whom they beat.

yosemitesam1

ganmo wrote: »

From what I've heard most of the pig production in china is small scale back garden type so not very intensive, and it's going through the wild boar population in eastern Europe too so in this case the intensive nature of pig production isn't a factor

The big units in China are not suffering the same severe losses. It's nearly all in the small scale/no biosecurity farms