[Andy Carson]

Thanks Rick, I kinda thought this was beyond my skill level, but wanted to check if this was easier than I thought it might be… Maybe I was making it more complicated in my mind than it ought to be… Sounds like it’s not an easy task, so I’ll leave it to someone who knows what they are doing and keep my life and limbs to myself.

PS. The biggest source of my dilemma is this… I think the most rotten part would have to be part of the notch (I can’t imagine it would make a good hinge and I wouldn’t trust it to hold if I made it part of a backcut). I can usually find a strong looking part of these trees to make a backcut into, but as I’m not sure how deep the rot extends, it seems the tree might give way too early. Also, I am a little nervous about relying on a hinge that might be half (or more) rotten. Also complicating this (at least with a couple trees) is that there is rot on the side of the tree that I wouldn’t want it to fall because it would hange up on close neighbor trees or “sister trunks”. I wonder if these types of trees are often “head stratchers” to the Pros?

[Andy Carson]

I talked to Doug Wallace, the Lead Agroforester for the USDA. Another informative and helpful call, and another great resource for anyone with similar ideas. He was not familiar with anyone specifically growing nuts or fruit for hogs to eat, but thought that it made sense. He was familiar with some people using hogs to “clean up” after fruit or nut harvest, but that is only roughly similar to what I am thinking of. Doug had some concerns about hogs damaging trees and recommended a system where tree crops with similar harvest/drops times are planted together in smaller pastures that hogs would “rotate through” at harvest time. I think this sounds like a good system as well. Again, Doug agreed that this would most likely be a system for spring born hogs that would be harvested in the fall. The seasonal fruit/nut harvest of trees is something that is difficult to get around, and other crops will be needed in the winter and early spring.

PS. The USDA agriforestry website is http://www.unl.edu/nac/index.htm , there is alot of info here on silvopasture systems for other animals, such as cattle sheep and goats. It seems hogs are missing from this group, but maybe I can change that a bit… I can’t resist an experiment.

[Andy Carson]

I had a very interesting conversation with Ken Asmus of Oikos Tree Crops about this project. This is a company also inspired by J Russell Smith’s book and they have done some selection and breeding to produce higher yielding, more disease tree crop varieties. Overall, Ken is a really nice guy and had alot of helpful thoughts and suggestions on this topic. I recommend you give him a call if you are interested in utilizing tree crops. His improved selections would probably help, but I also found the management techniques extremely interesting.

Ken said was familiar with people using acorns, chestnuts, and honeylocust as mast sources for pigs. Acorns are a common source of mast and are very hardy trees, but one drawback to acorns is that the yields vary greatly from year to year and from tree to tree. Ken suggested a couple of techniques that help with this natural limitation of oaks. One was to plant a variety of type of oak. As each oak variety would have a different “off year” and by planting a mixture, you have a greater chance of a reliable crop. The other suggestion was to graft extremely productive oaks onto less productive trees. It’s possible to do this with pre-existing trees, turning a “run-of-the-mill” oak into a very productive one in just one year (as opposed to a decade to grow one from a seedling). Simple technique, but the results can be very powerful.

Chestnuts are a little less hardy than oaks, but Ken was aware of people using these as mast sources for pigs (particularly the Chinese variety). As with the oaks, production will increase dramatically (very dramatically!) if you select and graft productive trees onto less productive roots. The grafting technique is especially important for trees grown from seed and wild trees.

Ken was also aware of research using honey locust as a fodder source for livestock (though usually not hogs). Yields here could rival field crops if the trees are well taken care of. Interestingly (this wasn’t Ken’s idea) productive honey locust could be grafted onto existing locust trees. I, for one, have a fair amount of black locust in my fence rows. Might be easy to “convert” them into a tree my pigs can eat… Again, this could save a decade.

Ken was less comfortable speculating on other tree types that he didn’t know of anyone using as sources of hog feed. He confirmed that Mulberrys, with thier extended harvest season, make sense but warned me that again, I would probably want to graft these. He wasn’t suprized that hazelnuts and walnuts produce the most calories per acre on paper, but these trees are often grafted and it’s not really fair to compare the productiving of grafted trees to that of wild ungrafted trees. If the wild trees were selected and grafted, who knows what the yields would be? It really gives me an appreciation for how powerful this selection technique is. Ken also suggested crabapples might be a good crop to incorporate, as some strains hold thier fruit well into winter, providing food (with a shake) during a difficult season.

[Andy Carson]

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I have had a tough year too. This isn’t easy stuff to do and learn. I am gaining an appreciation for the 50-60 year old lifetimes farmers who still “run things by” thier fathers when they make tillage/planting plans. There’s a science to all this, but there is also much skill, strategy, and artistry. We can try our best to understand the science, but I am also learning that so much comes from experience too. I have made friends with as many farming neighbors as I can and always try to pick thier brain about what I’m doing and what they think my challenges might be. A few think I’m a little odd to be doing all this with animal power, but still there is much to learn. I really wish I could ask questions of the “old timers” who used animals in my area. That might require a trip to the nursing home… Actually, maybe that’s not a bad idea… Mentors are always nice and one who knows the ground you are working and the very local challenges would be a great resource. I don’t, for example, have toad flax. I have lots and lots of toads, but no toad flax :). Best of luck in the future, really. Just because it’s hard does mean it’s not worth doing!

[Andy Carson]

George inspired me to ask my neighbor dairy farmer (and raw milk producer) what he does with his whey from cheese making. He dumps it into his septic and uses it to irrigate his fields. He said I could have all I want I just have to haul it, which seems like a damn good deal. He said they don’t make alot of cheese, but “alot” to someone with 50 head of dairy cows is very different from my view of “alot.” 300 gallons a pop, maybe twice a week, is alot in my mind, and likely morethan I can use. Kind of an unexpected bonanza…

[Andy Carson]

Thanks a lot George, great to have a specific case to work with and some numbers. I’m going to try to figure out how many Calories the hogs are foraging in two ways, first by figuring out their total needs, and subtracting the whey. Secondly, I will calculate calories from the expected yield of acorns. If these two numbers match, then it gives me more confidence in the numbers. Actually, if the numbers don’t match, it’s even more interesting… Let’s see…

10,000 gallons of whey gives 160,000 cups whey, which is 59 Calories per cup, yielding 9,440,000 Calories or 9440 Mcal. I am going to figure an outdoor hog would take 1000 lb of corn to produce, I know this is a bit higher than the food requirements of indoor hogs, but I think it’s a good rough estimate given greater exercise of outdoor pigs and lower temps in winter. 1000 lbs corn x 1.6 Mcal/lb x 12 head = 19200 Mcal. 19200-9440=9760 calories from forage. So, with no supplemental feeding, your hogs would be getting 51% of their calories from forage. The supplemental feeding, or course, changes this. 500 lbs corn (800 Mcal) per year means the hogs are consuming 47% of their calories from forage (19200-9440-800=8960, 8960/19200 = 47%). Feeding 1000 lbs (1600 Mcal) means they are foraging for 43% of their calories (19200-9440-1600=8160, 8160/19200 = 43%). Feeding 2000 lbs (3200 Mcal) means they are foraging for 34% of their calories (19200-9440-3200=6560, 6560/19200 = 34%). Feeding 4000 lbs (6400 Mcal) means they are foraging for 18% of their calories (19200-9440-6400=3360, 3360/19200 = 18%). At 6100 lbs of corn, the hogs are essentially not obtaining calories from forage (9760/1.6=6100).

OK, lets see these calories are avaliable from the trees present. Forestry friends, please help me out here! A stand of oaks with a DBH of 18 inches might have a Basal area of 70 square feet per acre, which would yield about 40 trees per acre (here’s where I need the most help, I’m not sure I am even using these terms correctly!). With 10-25% oak in a stands, that would be an average of 7 oaks per acre (40×17.5%). Does this sound about right? Acorn yield is incredibly variable from year to year, but an average for northern red oak in forests around here is 75,000 acorns per acre (from http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/newtown_square/publications/research_papers/pdfs/scanned/ne_rp680p.pdf). 75,000 acornsx17.5%=13,125 acorns. At 85 acorns per pound this is only 154 lbs of acorns per acre, contributing only 1.4% of the total calories for 12 hogs (1.76 Mcal/lb= 271 Mcal, 271/19200=1.4%)… Perhaps it is possible to have the hogs collect acorns from several paddocks before deer and other wildlife get them, allowing consumption of three times this number, but that would still only contribute 4.2% of the total calories.

So, the hogs seem to be finding lots of food in the woods, but it’s not primarily acorns (unless you are feeding close to 3 tons of corn per year). Very interesting… I wonder what these “bonus” foods consist of and if they would also be available in groves or orchards of purely mast producing trees. It seems these are an important part of the diet of hogs at these lower and more sustainable stocking rates.

[Andy Carson]

That planter works poorly for peas. The drive wheel needs to drive pretty hard in peas to get the right planting rate. I thought this would work based on what happened in my yard, but I think Ill have to swap out the corn/sunflower unit for a soybean unit with brushes. More seeds per rotation, and the soybean meter was really was designed for that. I ran a few sunflowers through the until to make sure everything was working fine. The sunflowers, of coarse, don’t require the drive wheel to push so hard. This works both in the field and on my yard. I only did a test strip on the edge of the pea field though. I ended up finding a neighbor who wanted my rye for hay and would trade is for field work. I’m kinda in the middle of thinking about adjusting my business model and goals. I think that working 5 acres with a single is still possible, but if the weather gets bad (like it was this spring) it seems to cause this “perfect storm” that leads you to get behind on this and behind on that until you are so far behind you have to get a neighbor to help. In retrospect, I could have gotten alot more done if I had focused on working the plots I could and not kept fighting my loosing battle with that damned tough rye. It was a huge strategic error to be so stubborn. Another lesson is that figuring out how much field work you can get done is not merely a matter of multiplying the width of the implement by your speed. Simple lesson, I know, but I needed taught this. More importantly, I am questioning the wisdom of growing more field crops that I know I could possibly sell as processed snack foods. Before this year, I had kinda thought that going one acre of corn (for example) would only be slightly harder than growing a half acre. Maybe I got this idea from tractor work, but no matter where it came from, it’s not the case with this kind of hands-on slow work with animal power. Growing twice as much crop is really close to twice as hard the way I’m doing it. That means I really ought to only grow as much as I can realistically sell directly to consumers or use for animal feed for my own animals. There are less labor intensive ways to feed animals, though, than growing all your own crops, harvesting them, and bringing the to the animals, though. In the end I think I’m going to scale back my field crop plots by perhaps half (which is still more than I could probably sell directly to consumers), and use the other half to provide feed for hogs in ways I am still investigating. It looks like this might actually produce more pork with the same amount of land, but if it doesn’t I can always switch back to one acre plots (having learned from smaller plots). Maybe, this year was a total fluke, I don’t like the idea or having so much productivity lost due to weather. I can’t let years go by with disasters like this year is turning out to be from a crop standpoitn and something ought to change. not that this year has been a total wash, and I have gotten some time to work on “accessory” projects such as raising a farm dog, setting up bee hives, planting fruit trees, raising chickens, building chicken coops, putting up fences, etc. Still though, I had hoped to have crops in the field too.

[Andy Carson]

That planter works poorly for peas. The drive wheel needs to drive pretty hard in peas to get the right planting rate. I thought this would work based on what happened in my yard, but I think Ill have to swap out the corn/sunflower unit for a soybean unit with brushes. More seeds per spin. It really was designed for that. I did run a few sunflowers through the unit int he field to make sure everything was working fine. The sunflowers, of coarse, don’t require the drive wheel to push so hard, and it works both in the field and on my yard. I only did a test strip on the edge of the pea field though. I ended up finding a neighbor who wanted my rye for hay and would trade this for field work. I’m kinda in the middle of thinking about adjusting my business model and production goals. I think that working 5 acres with a single is still possible, but if the weather gets bad (like it was this spring) it seems to cause this “perfect storm” that leads you to get behind on this and behind on that until you are so far behind you have to get a neighbor to help. In retrospect, I could have gotten alot more done if I had focused on working the plots I could work and not kept fighting my loosing battle with that damned tough rye. It was a huge strategic error to be so stubborn. Another lesson is that figuring out how much field work you can get done is not merely a matter of multiplying the width of the implement by your speed. Simple lesson, I know, but one I needed taught. More importantly, I am questioning the wisdom of growing more field crops that I know I could possibly sell as processed snack foods. Before this year, I had kinda thought that going one acre of corn (for example) would only be slightly harder than growing a half acre. Maybe I got this idea from tractor work, but no matter where the idea came from, it’s not the case with this kind of hands-on slow work with animal power. Growing twice as much crop is really close to twice as hard the way I’m doing it. That means I really ought to only grow as much as I can realistically sell directly to consumers or use for animal feed for my own animals. Not more than this simply becasue I can’t think of what else to do with the land. After all , there are less labor intensive ways to feed animals than growing all your own crops, harvesting them, and bringing them to the animals. In the end I think I’m going to scale back my field crop plots by perhaps half (which is still more than I could probably sell directly to consumers), and use the other half to provide feed for hogs in ways I am still investigating (discussed some in the agroforestry thread). It looks like this might actually produce more pork with the same amount of land, but if it doesn’t I can always switch back to one acre plots (having learned from smaller plots). Maybe this year was a total fluke, I don’t like the idea or having so much productivity lost due to weather. I can’t let years go by with disasters like this year is turning out to be from a crop standpoint and something ought to change. Not that this year has been a total wash, and I have gotten some time to work on “accessory” projects such as raising a farm dog, setting up bee hives, planting fruit trees, raising chickens, building chicken coops, putting up fences, etc. Still though, I had hoped to have crops in the field too.

[Andy Carson]

By the way, I appreciate that this conversation is branching out into other species (cows, goats, etc). I think that pigs might be able to utilize mast better than many species, but there is forage avaliable in the forest too. I think the pigs make for a good “case study,” but I am sure many of the concepts from this discussion would apply to other farm animals. Tree selection, rotations, and stocking rates, would likely be different for each different animal species, but I think the same concepts would apply. I think if there were standards and criterea developed for how to ecologically and sustainably utilize tree covered areas, this could be useful to alot of people. There’s alot of fencerows out there, as well as alot of margional ground that might be more productive with tree cover. There’s also alot of undeveloped forest, but I am still skeptical about if this is a good place for “agroforestery,” both from a practical, economical, and ecological point of view.

[Andy Carson]

George,
I am glad you do this, it really gives me (and all of us) another case to look at. I think it is an especially important one because it sounds like your stocking density is much closer to what the land can support. Your case would allow for some specific calculations of how many calories are avaliable from forest both in nut/fruit season and out of it. I think this is important because it seems hogs are capable of finding significacnt amounts of food that I wouldn’t have even expected to “be there” and didn’t enter into my calculations. The manuscript posted earlier mentioned pigs can consume up to 1200 earthworms per day, for example, and this is am important source of protein on pasture. I would have never guessed the number would have been this high or that it would be important. So, a couple specific questions, if you don’t mind, George:

How many hogs do you stock per acre? Do you have to do anything “special” to protect desirable trees?
What are the main mast producing tree species in your forest/pasture plots? Oaks? Any idea what percentage of the total trees are mast producing? Do you know thier average age and/or size?
Does your stocking rate vary depending by season and/or types of trees in the pasture?
How much whey are the pigs fed fed? Do they consume it all?
How does the palatability of whey compare to grain and forage (maybe it’s important to feed a nutritional, but not “yummy” feed)?
Do you farrow your pigs? If not, do you have a hard time finding pigs when you need them?
Do you have any experience with heritage breeds, and have you noticed any performance differences in your set-up?

Reguarding the taste of the pork, I couldn’t agree with you more. I think I would be proud to raise pork that tastes good to me, even if some consumers prefer supermarket pork. I think this is a concern for someone wanted to move huge quantities on the open market, and not as big of a concern for smaller producers who can meet with customers and explain why thier pork tastes better (or at least different). Sorry to bombard you with questions, George, and thanks for any information you can provide.

[Andy Carson]

Don’t get me wrong, there does seem to be an interest (and market for) forest raised pork. What there isn’t is a large market for is skinny hogs that have had had to forage hard for thier food. This is why so many prodcers supplement… With the supplements, though, it’s hard how much of thier diet comes from mast. Simply running pigs through the woods doesn’t mean they are eating significant amounts of mast. Actually given the 1) limited time each individual fruit or nut is avaliable 2) low percentage of natural trees that prduce large amounts of mast 3) high typical stocking rates of hogs and 4) rotational grazing/foraging practices required by high stocking rates that give wildlife access to these quick to consume, easy to carry, highly desirable, foods, I bet less than 10% of the calories consumed by hogs in large systems comes from mast. Selling pork raised in this way as “acorn finished” would be a dishonest marketing ploy in my mind. “Free range” would be better term, but then you have to compete with other free range pork… You might be able to produce a few pigs in good condition that have eaten mostly acorns in natural forests, but could you charge twice the price??? Probably not, so it makes better economic sense to run twice the hogs with supplemental feed and charge a little less. It probably makes the most economic sense to run as many as the land can bear without permanant damage and feed them ad lib. Economic sense, yes, but not for me…

This is why I am a little skeptical of the potential of this system using purely natural forests. I think to have significant production, one would want to carefully plan and probably plant a series of trees with usefully timed crops. I am not interested in oaks for this either because 1) they take a long time to mature 2) there is little market for acorns as human food (as there is for alot of other tree crops) and 3) yields are quite variable from year to year, making planning difficult. That said, I am fencing in any oaks I find in my fencerow. Even though oaks as planted trees have less use for me, several types of fruit and nuts grow to production in my lifetime. I see what you are saying about productivity in our lifetimes, and you might be right about the economics of this, but I think truly sustainable systems should stretch beyond our own lifetimes. Besides, some of the area where the trees would go is largely “doing nothing” now anyway, so I suppose there’s nothing to loose.

[Andy Carson]

@Carl Russell 27562 wrote:

My dream is to build a manure composting structure near the barn, with pigs housing allowing access for the pigs to one bin at a time to gain some nutrients from the manure while turning it for me. Topping this building off with a green house to use the nitrogen and CO2 rich air is also a big part.

Here’s an idea that might be easier and cheaper to build. If your greenhouse has a small adjustable vent at the top, the warm air in the green house will rise out the vent, and draw in air from whereever you design it to come from. Now, if you piled manure next to the greenhouse and covered it with a tarp, that gives you a source of warm C02 rich air to work with. Connect the two with a dry vent (or similar) and there you go! One would want to make sure the tarp wasn’t so tight as to make the environment inside anaerobic, but I bet some old tires (or other free non-rotting item) placed between the pile and the tarp in the center would do this nicely. The pile would also need exposed to oxygen either underneath or around the sides, but this would likely be required anyway. Just a thought…

[Andy Carson]

Here’s an article discussing pasture as forage for pigs. Very interesting read.

http://journals.cambridge.org/article_S0029665103000417

One interesting point made in this article is how wild hogs evolved to live on forest margins, not deep woods. Perhaps this is why a mix of tree crops of other crops seems to work much better in others hands (and on paper for me). One of the other interesting points made in this paper is how pasture can contribute a huge portion of the diet for dry sows, with a range 12%-92% for individual sows. With such a wide range for individual sows, there is (and likely was) ample opportunity to select for sows that do well on pasture. I bet heritage breeds would be on the upper end of this range, maybe even at 100% calories from pasture. It is interesting to note that the contribution of pasture to growing pigs given concentrate ad lib is less than 5%. This increases, of course, if feed is limited, but limiting feed is associated with poor animal performance.

[Andy Carson]

A couple more comments as I learn more about this, make phones calls, and do research…

One of the limiting factors in having hogs harvest tree crops is that many crops drop at one short time in the year. Hogs can pick these crops up for sure, but one must have enough hogs “on hand” to do this. Having enough hogs on hand means that one must feed them something else for the remaining part of the year. This would often lead back to traditional field crops or a pasturing system, at least in part. This is something missed by simply calculating the calories and protein avaliable and dividing by the number of pigs… This is probably why J Russell Smith (and traditional southern hog raisers) focused on the mulberry. The tree is not a bad when it comes to yield per acre, but many nuts are far superior from the point of view of calories/protein per acre. The total calories per acre seem to be less important that having an extended harvest season. Much of these tree-crops are very high value to wildlife, and having them sit on the ground without getting eaten by critters is asking alot.

Another interesting this that I have learned is that many of the operations that focus on raising hogs in the woods are finish only operations. There seem to be a variety of reasons behind why they don’t farrow thier own pigs, something about profit margins and time spent with animal care versus time spent marketing… At any rate, at least one producer has difficulty finding enough pigs to raise every year. This problem is compounded by the observation that pigs born outdoors do much better in the woods than pigs born in confinement. Interestly, at least this producer told me that the breed of pig is less important that how they have been raised. So they buy any breed that has been rasied outdoors, then heritage crossbreeds raised indoors, then production breeds raised indoors. Because of short supply, they do end up having to buy some production pigs raised indoors. Another interesting finding is there doesn’t seem to be (as least from what I been told) a big difference in the carcass of pigs raised outdoors (in these large facilities) and the pork consumers are “used to eating.” Apparently, pork that “tastes different” is hard to sell in large quantities. Personally, I find it hard to believe that the way the hogs were fattened on different foods wouldn’t taste differently, but as many of the fed are fed grain ad lib, maybe this shouldn’t suprize me. At first glance, I wonder but force the pigs to forage and limit thier food? Reading a little more about swine nutrition and growth has led me to understand why this might be a bad plan for a large producer. Pigs grow so fast that if they do not have ample nutrition avaliable, they will make gains in frame at the expense of gains in muscle. A pig that was limited in feed when it was young (perhaps simply because it didn’t know who to find it) could miss out on a critical window to make large gains in muscle. If fed out later in life, gains would often be in fat, and so hitting this growth period is important. Traditional breeds were more able to make use of limited or variable calorie diets, but if you are a producer looking to buy 500 piglets, this is a luxury you are likley not going to find. Moreover, even if you could find these breeds, and could feed them mostly off of forage, thier carcasses would not be as widely marketable as a crossbred production hog. I think the market is there, but for 500 hogs, it would be a challenge… also, because large produucers often raise hogs in smaller “batches” not all hogs will be on hand when seasonal food is avaliable.

So, at the end of all this, I think there is potential for a hog-producing tree crop system where maybe 60-80% of the calories come from trees and the balance comes from a mix of pasture and field crops. To make this possible, I believe there must be a planned and managed system that makes ample food avaliable thoughout the time hogs are growing. Also, I think there is greater potential for a single “batches” of spring born pigs would make best use of tree crops. I will be doing more research and will report back.

As always, comments and thoughts are welcome. Also, if anyone knows of someone doing something like this, please point me in thier way. I would be happy to call and report back (if they are comfortable with me quoting them). Suprizingly, not everyone wants their practices posted publically and I am trying my best to make sure my sources aren’t revealed. 🙂 Feel free to PM.

[Andy Carson]

I really like my nylon harness, but I also use leather in several spots. I use a leather bridle, and would think twice about using nylon in this place because of the rubbing. I had some rubbing along the traces of my nylon harness as well, but prevented this by covering the part that rubbed with leather. It worked really well and was an easy fix. I think a high quality leather harness is great (other than that it’s heavy), but some cheap leather harnesses are just plain horrible.

[Author]

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