# Pig tilling?



## happydog (May 7, 2008)

This years garden used to be pasture with some trees on it. We cleared out all the trees with a bulldozer and now it's just a big field with roots, mud, and a few remnants of sod.

We've got about six weeks until we can plant a garden there. Can I run the pigs in there to till it up and fertilize it or is it too close to planting time? Would I risk burning seedlings or transplants with fresh pig manure? 

Thanks!


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

We run pigs in garden areas or rather we plant a great deal in our winter paddocks. The pigs do an excellent job and the plants thrive. Note that some plants do better than other. The broccoli is incredible. Pumpkins are amazing. Look for heavy feeder crops. We also grow a lot of beets, turnips, mangels and the like in those areas. I follow the pigs with chickens who weed. See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2006/05/of-tiller-pigs-weeder-chickens.html


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## happydog (May 7, 2008)

Thanks Walter. I'll have about 6-8 piglets. After the pigs and chickens finish up each section can I just rake and plant or will I need to till it?

And will this method eliminate plowing all together? From what I can see this spot used to be a lightly wooded (mainly poplars) and rarely used pasture for one horse. The soil looks pretty good except for the roots and some spots of pasture grass sprouting back.

The dozer took out the stumps but there are still some roots up to about 2 inches thick. I've got a root rake for the tractor. Should I use it first or will the piglets get the roots up for me too?

Thanks a bunch for the help. I've never started a garden completely from scratch like this before.

happydog


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

You shouldn't need to rake. That is the chicken's job. Tilling is the pig's job. I find the chickens leave the soil all smoothed out. Don't leave them in too long or they compact the soil. Same for the pigs. I don't till or plow - the animals do the work. I would similarly leave the roots for the pigs to work. We just cleared many acres and a decade ago we also cleared field. Both times we left stumps and roots for the animals. Works fine - just slower. There is lots of space between the stumps to plant.


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## happydog (May 7, 2008)

Wow, thanks, I'm stoked! 

Why the heck doesn't everybody have pigs??


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

...and chickens...and dogs...and a cow...and...


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## darbyfamily (Mar 16, 2005)

uh oh... clearly ya'll are enablers! 

I wish I could find some piglets in our area!


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## HeritagePigs (Aug 11, 2009)

We allowed four pigs to live in our backyard this winter (November to late February). The yard is about 90 x 240 ft. The soil is mostly clay and has lots of rocks. On the pasture, the pigs root easily to six inches.

At the end of winter we now have a yard where about two thirds has been rooted. I wish I could say that the first two thirds was nicely tilled and the last third was untouched, but it's more like parts of Vietnam in 1972. I will not say that they "tilled" the soil, as my tiller leaves everything fairly well distributed and relatively level. The rooted areas are more like bomb craters. I took my harrow and ran it several times over the yard, which helped some, but the yard still has lots of little hills and valleys. I would have to use my real tiller to make the yard uniform.

And, yes, my chickens free range all year and are in the yard daily. There is no way they could move all of the dirt that the pigs mounded up. I would guess they moved less than ten percent. 

Perhaps I did not have enough pigs; perhaps 20 odd chickens was not enough; perhaps my mostly clay soil was just too dense; perhaps I should have divided the yard into rotational paddocks and not moved the pigs until each paddock was a muddy mess. Perhaps this would have worked better on a sandy beach. But my experiment with pig tilling was only a partial success. I still have to use my tiller on the vegetable garden area. I'll still have to spend a lot of time leveling the grass areas before seeding. I won't have to fertilize; there's plenty of that, and hopefully the smell won't linger for much longer...

So, don't get too excited with the idea of letting the livestock handle the work for you. Your mileage may vary; I wish you luck.

Brian
Large Black and Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs
HomegrownAcres.com


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

Dividing the area into smaller paddocks and rotating the pigs will make a big difference. In smaller spaces they root more and deeper. We then follow them with chickens who smooth the soil, weed and get insects.


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## HeritagePigs (Aug 11, 2009)

OK, you gotta tell me how you do that. Remember, I'm only talking about my back yard, not my farm pasture. So in my 90 X 240 ft back yard how large do I make each paddock? How soon would I have to move the hogs? Remember I'm talking about four hogs. And how do I follow them with chickens? It would have to be a chicken tractor or a heck of a high fence separating each "paddock".

Just poking fun and trying to be real here. Separating my back yard into paddocks, rotating hogs and chickens through; well, that sounds like more work than just using my tiller... 

brian
Large Black and Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs
HomegrownAcres.com


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## bruceki (Nov 16, 2009)

Heritage, I think you're catching on. What's talked about is not something that is actually done. I wrote about it on my blog here. 

My pigs, when they've rooted, produce the bomb craters too, and I use a power rake to bring it back to level before planting it. I have 200 chickens, and that chicken army is not going to level the pig craters in any sort of reasonable timeframe. If I lived on the side of a mountain that had poor soil with granite ledges underneath it, I don't think rooting would be much of a problem. But if you live on good pasture land the pigs will dive deep -- 2 to 3 feet. 

The other thing about chickens is that they really won't go more than a couple of hundred feet from the feed and coop with any regularity. So to get them to "follow the pigs" you're going to have to move their coop and food there, too. 

Joe Salatin tried egg mobiles -- trailers with coops on them for his laying flock. He's abandoned that idea for smaller acreages because chickens just come back to roost at the original location and abandon the eggmobile. If you have enough acres so you can move the chickens completely out of sight they'll stick with the coop he reports. 

Bruce / ebeyfarm.blogspot.com


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## HeritagePigs (Aug 11, 2009)

Thanks, Bruce. 

brian


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

HeritagePigs said:


> OK, you gotta tell me how you do that. Remember, I'm only talking about my back yard, not my farm pasture. So in my 90 X 240 ft back yard how large do I make each paddock? How soon would I have to move the hogs? Remember I'm talking about four hogs. And how do I follow them with chickens? It would have to be a chicken tractor or a heck of a high fence separating each "paddock".


Make the paddocks small enough that the pigs will root up the area in a few days. How big will depend on the size of the pigs, number of pigs, soil, etc. Adjust to fit.

To follow them with chickens have leave the area fenced and put chickens in the area. This can be done using pig/chicken tractors, electrified poultry netting, permanent fencing, etc. Depends on your resources and needs. Clip the flight feathers on one wing of each of the chickens to prevent flying. This makes them lop-sided.


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## Welshmom (Sep 7, 2008)

As far as the manure burning your plants, hog manure is considered a "cool" manure, and is not likely to burn plants.


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## Bret4207 (May 31, 2008)

I've used hogs to "landscape" for years. I have never, ever, anywhere seen someone put in a garden following hogs without doing some major land leveling. I like to use a good disc followed by a board drag, followed by tilling. Hogs will hit say 80% of the garden area, but that other 20% ( their bathroom area for example) will be sod. So plan on running some sort of implement over the land after the hogs are gone.


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## HeritagePigs (Aug 11, 2009)

Thanks, Bret. So I guess my experience is typical. I may use hogs again for next year's garden but I will just make my expectations real.

Walter (highlands), I'm sorry, man, you usually have good advice but your ideas on this... 

brian
Large Black and Gloucestershire Old Spots
HomegrownAcres.com
HomegrownAcres.com/blog


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

Not "ideas", but rather experience. You are welcome to do it however you like. I merely let you know how we do it. It works great for us. No need for you to be so dismissive.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa


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## bruceki (Nov 16, 2009)

Highlands gets results that other farmers have a hard time matching.


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## HeritagePigs (Aug 11, 2009)

Walter, I'm not being dismissive, I'm being skeptical. The OP said he had six weeks to turn his pasture into a ready to plant garden space. You suggested that he could do that by running pigs and then chickens through his space and that will let him avoid having to do any tilling or raking. My experience says that it ain't gonna work; six weeks just isn't enough time especially since he is only going to use 6 to 8 piglets. 

Your advice in general is good and I wholeheartedly agree that doing things in a sustainable manner is the right way. My point in this thread is that your method, for this person and his situation, is not good advice. If he tries it I expect he will be very disappointed.

brian


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## catahoula (Dec 14, 2005)

If farming has taught me anything it has taught me that what works for one person or region might not work for another. 

The OP won't know for sure until they try.


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## agmantoo (May 23, 2003)

When I took my hogs off the 5 acres they were assigned, I put my 32,000 lb Cat on the "bombed site" to do the leveling. About 125 gallons of diesel fuel later it looked nice.


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## 99RB (Apr 5, 2008)

bruce you sound jealous
just because you are failing doesnt mean you should tear other people down
i looked over your blog
you attack people left and right there and here
try to focus your energy on doing a better job
you also seem to put a lot of effort into fighting with your naghbors the government and anyone else that comes along

happydog pigs are great in a field but limit their space so they do just a littl area at a time
fence it really good or they will be everywhere and out


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## bruceki (Nov 16, 2009)

So far most of the people who have actually tried this report the same results. Your results may vary, but if I'm doing a headcount here, I think that it's pretty clear what the consensus is. 

Joel Salatin has tried to use pigs to clear or till land. He says he no longer does that, and I quote: 

"Salatin said that in addition to clearing land, pigs could be used to till as well.

He has used pigs to till up his family&#8217;s 1/4 acre garden.

'There are two problems with using pigs for tillage. One, the moisture of the soil has to be just right.

If it is too wet, they can destroy the soil&#8217;s texture. If it is too dry, they can&#8217;t root it up.

Second is the problem of scale. To quickly till five acres would require at least 500 pigs. The soil has to be right and the numbers have to be right for it to work.

It just isn&#8217;t practical in most instances.'&#8221;

Soil moisture content is also an issue with conventional tilling. Most folks dont' work the soil when it's too wet. 

You can see the entire article here.


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## Doc (Jun 5, 2003)

What materials do you use to make those small paddocks? The only thing I know that is mobile would electric fencing. It took us two days to fix the hog panels and I'm still not convinced that the pigs will stay inside (and there are only two small ones). It isn't mobile, and yet, we will need to move them in a week or so. It is incredibly time consuming.


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## Doc (Jun 5, 2003)

Rose, you are so right about getting younger pigs vs older ones -- esp. ones that are used to roaming. I sent a follow up to your photos asking how much electrinet you used and was curious about the charger. Where did you order it?

Also: know anything I can put on these two for ticks?

This has been an incredible learning experience. And $$$!


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## fishhead (Jul 19, 2006)

A while back someone posted that they get tree service companies to dump a foot of wood chips in the pig pen. Over the summer the pigs add nitrogen to break down the chips, work the organic matter into the soil and add other nutrients to the soil.

That sounds like a great way to build garden soil.

You could add earthworms to the soil to help break down the manure and give the pigs a reason to root. Plus it would give them some free food.


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## rothfivefarmers (May 5, 2014)

If I use pigs to till my garden, is it safe to plant? I read somewhere that pig manure has to be composted at really high temps to be safe for the garden. Any thoughts?


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

I plant high things the first year, for our food, lower the next year, ground the next. Most of our pig tilled areas though are for growing food for the pigs for the following fall and winter when pastures wane. I have never seen a parasite problem for them. Note that we get cold winters and that kills a lot of things.


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## gerold (Jul 18, 2011)

happydog said:


> This years garden used to be pasture with some trees on it. We cleared out all the trees with a bulldozer and now it's just a big field with roots, mud, and a few remnants of sod.
> 
> We've got about six weeks until we can plant a garden there. Can I run the pigs in there to till it up and fertilize it or is it too close to planting time? Would I risk burning seedlings or transplants with fresh pig manure?
> 
> Thanks!


In 6 weeks time you may be just wasting your time with pigs doing your tilling. Any tilling around here i do with a tractor. Plow and disc drag smooth and plant. I prefer my pigs eat the plants i plant and not root and dig holes that i have to repair before planting again. I have 20 acres of woods where the pigs do most of their rooting. The fields i work with tractor and plant different crops for the pigs. 

How big is your garden spot ? What type of soil ? Any rock ? How many pigs, how big are the pigs ? What breed of pigs ? What are you planning on planting in your garden ?
Is your garden spot well drained and level or is it hilly with poor soil ?

Best,
Gerold.


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

Tractors are great except when they roll down the mountain.  This is where pigs come in handy. They roll in a more controlled manner.  Flat lands this is not an issue, of course.

Speaking of which, everyone please be sure your location information is filled out in your profile so that questions can account for locational differences. See this thread:

http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/livestock-forums/pigs/505485-please-fill-location-info.html


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## LostMontanan (Mar 7, 2012)

This is how we used some pigs to cut in a new 100'x200' garden plot in just a few days...
















Worked great! I read everything Walter and Bruce write, and respect both men tremendously for never meeting them. But what is always missed in these tit for tats is the personal application part... OP take a concept and utilize it to your advantage with the tools and knowledge at your disposal. Nothing with farming is set in stone...


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## Gravytrain (Mar 2, 2013)

LostMontanan said:


> This is how we used to pigs to cut in a new 100'x200' garden plot in just a few days...
> 
> Worked great! I read everything Walter and Bruce write, and respect both men tremendously for never meeting them. But what is always missed in these tit for tats is the personal application part... OP take a concept and utilize it to your advantage with the tools and knowledge at your disposal. Nothing with farming is set in stone...


I've had similar results, except I use a 1/2 acre winter paddock for a sweet corn field/garden.

In the spring I put my pigs on rotation, and then plant the sweet corn and anything else I want. After I cultivate the corn for the last time, I broadcast rape, an appropriate legume for the date and a little bit of turnips and beets. By the time I've taken all the good corn and vegetables I want, the rape is knee high. I put the pigs on it around the first frost and they have a smorgasbord of rape, corn, vegetables, and root crops for a good part of the winter, as well as supplemented hay and dairy.

By May the ground is tilled and fertilized. I then make a few passes with a disc and plant.


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## TeenyTinyFarm (Jan 19, 2014)

LostMontanan said:


> This is how we used some pigs to cut in a new 100'x200' garden plot in just a few days...
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That is awesome!


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## WadeFisher (Sep 26, 2013)

Great post!


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