Piggy Salad Bar

It wasn't really all that long ago when most pigs were raised on small farms, in small lots and pastures. This was how my grandfather raised his pigs, and how I had hoped to raise ours. A couple of years ago, I joined the growing number of farmers who are raising heritage breed pigs on pasture. Believe it or not, pigs will graze!


Up until now, the pigs had been grazing on old goat pasture. a mix of grass, clover and weeds....well, mostly just weeds. So, this spring I decided to try something different. I left the pigs on one area a little longer than I normally would have liked and let the pigs totally root-up about an acre of ground. I then used my trusty old 1955 Allis Chalmers tractor and disk to smooth out the ruts and prepare the field for seeding. I hand broadcast a mixture of oats, dwarf Essex rape and field peas. I had read about a similar mix online somewhere and thought it might just work. That was about 60 days ago.

Tonight, I strung electric wire around this new seeding, turned the pigs out into this pasture and stood back to watch. Would they go after the rape, the field peas or the oats first? Well, neither actually. To my surprise, they first tackled the giant ragweed growing on the edge of the field. I wasn't sure if this was because they preferred it to my seeding mix, or maybe it was just because it was what they came upon first.

It wasn't long before they realized there was more beyond the ragweed and began running through the 2- foot deep vegetation like kids in a candy store. This made me feel much better. After all, I planted this piggy salad bar just for them.