Idaho Pasture Pigs, Business, Cost & Care
today i'm gonna be talking about idaho pasture pigs good afternoon everyone this is ranger rob and welcome to the ranger rob country living channel today i'm gonna be talking about idaho pasture pigs and i'm going to be frank and probably going to be realistic and talk about the plans with our ipp picks what we've learned about ipp pigs making money with ipp pigs things like that and so i know you guys see our pigs all the time but you gotta ask yourself why why would you do idaho pasture pigs why would you do pigs at all um and uh i'd have to say right off the bat it's not for the money because uh let's get realistic about numbers so when you have a registered idaho pasture pig they're 400 bucks a piece there's 800 right there and uh and they had to come from different regions because i can't have a boar which is our sparky here which is beautiful he's going to be really pretty cannot be related to our females so they've come from different locations so uh yeah so it was cost involved in that uh of course the mama over here uh just had piglets she cost me four hundred dollars now mr cow you guys saw earlier before we had them butchered when they're not registered they're 150 a piece okay so i'm just trying to give you numbers so now zelda has had eight piglets we lost one and uh and it's not over yet we could still lose a piglet or two who knows let's hope not so four of my piglets have been um four of my males have been castrated remember what i'm talking about here uh so when i sell them as feeders they can't be they can't be a breeder i'll get a hundred and fifty dollars a piece for those so what is that an income of what 500 and then uh the females if i have a female that i think has all the great qualities of a of a registered idaho pasture pig i may sell one or two as a registered idaho pasture pig that means i can get 400 apiece for them if not and they buy them as feeders which is no problem uh then they're only 150 apiece okay so uh it's easy to go i have twelve hundred dollars and registered pigs right now 150 on a feeder pig that i processed plus uh what i paid to have it processed uh plus all the equipment all these fences a set of two fences and a charger is about 500 a piece i've done that three times now there's 50 another 1500 bucks um will these piglets make me any money you already know the answer to that hell no not just no but hell no so what's the drive well for us uh the idaho pasture pigs let me turn this way so you can kind of see uh she's suddenly sending herself right now and some of my piglets are in the shade in a in the feral house anyway not to mention i had to pay for building a feral house so far two houses the little white ones that you have there so there is no way that these piglets will even come close to our investment and that's you know if you talk about business you gotta you gotta calculate this stuff this doesn't even talk about the feed i'm probably going through 20 pounds of feed a day um let's see a bag of high protein uh hog 19 is about 14 let's say 15 right so it's a 40 pound bag so i'm going through uh a day just feeding them i guess i'd be about right okay i'm talking about the morning and evening feed where our feed is up a little bit because she's a a recovering mom and i've got to feed these piglets and they're starting to eat solid food uh i do have some grassland and that's why getting them on grass would be important it will definitely reduce my feed cost but huh i probably have to have four or five more ferals or ferruling processes to possibly get close closer to breaking even so uh why are we doing this i guess we'll go back to that well i picked the idaho pasture pigs because they're unique uh they're a fantastic pig they're a great homesteading pig they're very friendly and you still gotta be cautious around them um they can get pushy things like that but you know if you're homestead with family and kids in your family i would trust them around idaho pasture pig a lot more than some of these other pigs the quality meat's fantastic you can train them electrically and you can actually put them a work in permaculture you can do other pigs too um but i know where my park's coming from now and i've got really good pork i can tell you the pork chops have been really good the bacon was over the top sausage seems great so that's all we've had so far and uh yeah so uh why are we doing this well i'd have to say right now it's a hobby farm it's it's not a profitable business and uh now like you you met the people helped us with the doing our uh our male pigs the other day i think they said they have over 20 some odd pigs and uh i imagine they've streamlined it and they've also been doing it for quite a few years so they've already got their fencing and infrastructure in so they may be getting to the point where they're actually making some money so the question the first question is in a small scale is it financially as far as making money um viable for you know extra income i'd have to say in my case no no um however there's other things that kind of go along with this this is helping me develop this land two is i have a youtube channel and youtube channels make money too so because we have content and and things to talk about with idaho pasture pigs uh that gives us some stuff for our channel which creates income and we get podcasting and we also sell the ranger rod poopy bags in a combination with all that i can still tell you it if i if i'm breaking even it'd be still be lucky but that could change over time it depends upon how far we want to go where i want to have maybe four or five paddocks and constantly have farrelling going on and do i won't even want to deal with that i don't know what they're fighting about back there they're they're a love-hate relationship back there but um moving on here i wanted to talk about the stresses of having your pigs and uh not to mention that my my camera cut me off earlier might have something to do with running it over with a tractor yesterday but uh anyway uh the stresses of having pigs is you get kind of connected to these pigs and so you worry about the you know uh the different seasons uh we just went through a really hot spell so we're out here making sure they're cool because pigs are kind of unique they don't sweat and they uh their materialism is a lot like a human so we also got to be careful what we feed them i made a mistake of feeding raw potatoes to them when i first got them and they were sicker than the dog for two days what a mistake and uh you know uh the other thing is we know i told you we have to pay for feed and we have to pay for minerals and idaho pasture pigs like grass we live in high desert so we don't necessarily always have a lot of grass so we do have some hey maggie got a dirty face um and uh yeah so the infrastructure we had to pay for you know these build these uh houses for them they're furling houses uh we have to pay for their fencing i may have mentioned earlier for a set of two fences which is 200 feet and um premiere fencing a charge and a charger you're looking at uh 500 a piece we've done that for three times already so uh yeah it's uh uh something to consider as a viable business uh unless you look at the fact that this is the first investment year there's no way that this could be good for making money until we either step it up more or well for us it's like this is our first piglets let's see how this goes see how it is you know the the sell them to uh is it going to be a problem do i have regular customers or not is it worth the effort don't know those questions yet those answers um and uh but when it comes to permaculture and helping me develop these fields out here uh that's huge uh they've done some amazing things with our new garden up front and also back here summertime any of the grass that i did gain has died off but uh in the fall we'll be at it again and doing our fall and winter planting as far as cover crops and stuff so and eventually i think we're going to water this area a little more so we have more grassland for the pigs which will help decrease the price and feed now for the enjoyment of having pigs it's been fantastic piglets are adorable and getting the right mindset of knowing that you're raising pigs you can't have them as pets they're not practical as pets some people do that but um they either gotta be a breeder or they're gonna be a feeder that's all there is to it and uh one will probably be a companion pig for sparky when he has to be alone but uh you're being too cute way too cute peoples anyway apparently mom's also an obstacle to climb over uh but yeah it's been fun for filling um but as a business this is a hobby farm so far and uh it would have we'd have to really step it up here to make this profitable and you gotta ask yourself are you willing to look at the labor that you have to put i have to feed these guys twice a day every morning i have to come out here every night and if i can't make it out here someone has to be here so then i may have to find a home sitter that costs money your labor your time is worth money too so you need to keep that in mind that you got the labor you got the responsibility you get the feed you've got the minerals you've got a medical stuff that you need to have for castration and things like that giving them uh deworming and things like that uh so i can't tell you for sure if it's a i for now i can tell you it's not a viable business um unless i change the processes and of course in this video i want to urge you in the comments to ask questions like or say rob why aren't you doing this or why why aren't you doing that but i'm trying to point out to you the cost involved the time involved and understand that you gotta know your limitations and you gotta also know what your obligations are and be accountable for it and having pigs scared me he hit the fence um we keep this fence live because we're trying to make sure that these pigs are trained for electric fences so when their new owners set up their uh their paddocks that they're they're trained for electric and so uh yeah so you learn a lot um the learning curve this year has been amazing um have i regretted it at all not at all not really until like maybe we want to go somewhere the pigs once again i refuse to feed these pigs all they can eat because they will eat all they can eat and i want healthy pigs and yes i want them big but i want them healthy so i'm not going to overfeed these pigs so it's important i feed them two times a day regulate their food um bring up their uh uh nutrients when i need to and when mom is pregnant or she's recovering from being having piglets i step up the protein a little bit and make sure she recovers well um so yeah more stress more concern more responsibility are you willing to do that idaho pasture pigs i once again if you're a homesteader i highly recommend idaho pasture pigs they're much more friendly i trust them around your your children more however what i do want to mention is mamas or mamas if you mess with their babies some mamas are going to get a little bit aggressive or really aggressive and boars can be very pushy especially if they're chasing girls and stuff so they're pigs they're animals they're not pets and uh it's feeding time for example i need to trim one of her toenails right now i can't layer on her side i have to also know the limitations of what i can do with her i can't clip her toenails because the piglets will come out running and two i've got to be in a scenario that if she gets ticked off and she can turn on me really quick and push me around uh just because she doesn't like to have her toenails clipped so uh yeah you gotta realize these are not pets these are pigs and uh luckily they're a lot more tolerable to people than say other types of pigs so a fantastic pig uh they weigh up to 250 300 pounds um when you want to get uh butcher room um and uh of course being idaho pasture pigs you get the fact that they're a unique pig and uh what you know if they meet all the cre now if you go to idaho pasture pig association page they'll tell you what to look for in your pigs uh you know and the other thing i didn't really mention too much is they don't root as bad as other pigs if you look at other videos and see people have other kinds of pigs they'll have really long noses and stuff those pigs are designed to dig and that's what pigs do these guys root too but lightly not as deep they will root when they're young their first year their first half year they really want to root a lot if they're rooting a lot still they're also looking for minerals and that's what introduced me to bringing in nyx gin it's actually called next-gen you can get it on amazon it's kind of expensive but a lot of times they're looking for minerals that they're not getting and they'll try to do it through rooting so uh yeah uh learned a lot would i do it again yes this has been a fan my wife has fallen in love with these pigs and she was actually more opposed to us getting pigs but uh uh what are we getting out of it quality meat the enjoyment of being home and enjoying being at the homestead because we enjoy these animals um but it also means responsibility and resp accountability and cost and it's like uh mom says kitchen's closed that's it um just need to realize that and uh we're in high desert so we don't have the grass these are pasture pigs they will eat grass and that can reduce your cost hi mama you are one dirty piggy look at you you are just covered it's getting kind of closer to the dinner time so but right now she is she put on her makeup she's looking good what a pretty little girl um maggie is one big mom pig and uh by the way if you don't know the names uh if they haven't had pigs before they're called guilt if they've had so she's a guilt uh he's a bore because he hasn't been fixed the ones have been fixed or barrels i believe you call them nice how's it going i hear you eating some grass huh i guess eating grass is better than smoking grass and then uh uh when they've had piglets already she's a sow i just learned that i know you sound like an x-ray don't i just watch youtube videos anyway you just you learn as you go these guys go through a lot of water um so always fill in their waters other ways to do water but i kind of like this way right now a lot of people do the nipple thing in a barrel but uh here it gets so warm that we have a algae problems a lot so uh plus when we overfill their their uh bowls it just spills into their wallows and so we're always constantly changing the water in the wallows because we'll get algae problems on that and uh it is good to have a dog that will likes bell to help us keep them uh under control because when they're freelancing in the property or they get loose we've actually had belle didn't know she had the ability to actually hurt him for us a little bit she's not perfect at it but uh one nice thing about having a german shepherd so anyway this has been kind of uh my chance to tell you why uh we have idaho pasture pigs two is uh uh is it a good business it could be but you really have to make some obligations to do it is it profitable for us now absolutely not you've already heard my numbers um i'll be lucky to get one or two registered females sold here which i can get 400 for but most likely most of my pigs here i'll get a hundred and fifty dollars for uh one of the boys i want to keep as a companion pig we call him fireball um he's one of the smaller males but uh we like him and uh he could grow up to still be a really good-sized pig but eventually sparky's gonna be on his own because i'm gonna try to avoid having piglets in the winter time and uh yeah and so um having space for them um since we move our pigs around a lot we don't really have problems with smell or anything like that when it when we can start smelling the pigs a little bit we move them to another paddock um and then when we're done with a paddock because we're doing permaculture and they're great for permaculture then we start this is in the early stages we'll take a tractor in start burning and mixing their droppings into the dirt then eventually we smooth it out we run cover crop but my cover crop has died because my cover crop is more of a fall winter crop and then down there is a place where we cleared out uh had the pigs down there but we haven't planted it and i've been waiting till the fall to do that um but anyway they are starting to make this ground come alive with their droppings and with them digging and and etc um that's been a real positive thing for us so having the pigs for permaculture has been fantastic for meat fantastic for business well not so good so far profit no no profit uh can it be well if i streamline things a little bit probably uh change some of my processes uh to make them more repeatable things like that yes it could be a profitable business now the profit profit still wouldn't be that much so let's say i make a 500 to a thousand dollars off of piglets what do you do without that's not very much money you know like a good income when you get a job 5 000 a month is good income 500 to a thousand dollars in profit on piglets it's not very much you'd have to be turning a lot of pigs so uh you want to keep that in mind but if you have other things like we have the youtube channel we have podcast stuff in our range raw poopy bags we have a combination hey i'll never say no to 500 or a thousand dollars extra and that's not even per month that's just a one-time shot so uh uh i hope a lot of things i just brought up here is good information for you and gives you food for thought in the comments below once again please ask questions make suggestions um ask us things that we haven't talked about it before and uh you know it's really it's all about the idaho pasture pig and another name form is ipps and we highly recommend them we're very happy with them they could be a viable business but uh it also depends on how how far down the rabbit hole you really want to go so please take the time to like and share and subscribe to our channel we'd appreciate it love to hear your comments i hope you found this helpful and uh yeah and last piece of wisdom don't run over your camera with the tractor because i had to do this part last part over again so anyway guys have a great day and talk to you later bye now our videos are made possible by ranger rob poopybags available at amazon right now thank you very much for watching our video please take the time to like subscribe and share our videos all over the whole wide world thanks you
2022-08-21 00:20
