# feeding hogs 10% sweet feed, will it be ok?



## littlequail (Aug 5, 2011)

Hey everyone! can i just tell you i'm STICK of feed prices!!!! anyway we are very luck we live about a hour away from a feed mill and pick up our chicken layer for about $10.50 per 50 pounds, And are hog feed for around 11.50 per 50 pounds, However i buy my goat feed from a local feed shop in town its "Stock and stable 10% Multi-purpose sweet feed" i love this stuff, it has great volume to it sweet and fresh best part my feed shop sells it for $9.75 a 50 pound bag.....can i feed it to my hogs as a complete feed?


i have one red wattle and one Large black cross. the male is easily over 400+ pounds and STILL growing. the female is a bit more 300 pounds. they will max out at around 800+ ...i have given them a few scoops before and they loved it (they eat anything) the feed isnt crap, i really like it, smells rich and my dairy goats Love it....so would it be ok to feed my hogs?​


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

If you increase the calories then you will tend to increase fat. If you decrease protein then you tend to decrease muscle building. To compensate you'll increase time or feed amounts per time. There may be other issues - compare the bag tags. If you're feeding a bought feed as their diet it may not be worth the trade off because over their life it may take as much or more to get them to the desired market weight. For breeders it is more of a maintenance thing.

The pigs will likely continue growing for a long time. Finisher size of around 250 lbs is merely a point at which most go to slaughter because on grain feeds they start putting on more fat and slow the lean gain as well as starting to decrease feed conversion rates in most pigs. On pasture this is not such a big deal as one is not paying out per pound of feed but if one's buying grain feeds it gets more and more expensive to keep feeding them to larger weights.

If you really want to save on feed then pasturing is probably the key although I don't know what land is like in Central Florida where you are.

I find that our big breeder sows top out at around 600 to 800 lbs (not pregnant weight) while the boars top out at around 1,000 to 1,700 lbs. This is all on pasture so they're lean animals, not fat. I've heard of fat ones (grained in pens) getting considerably larger. Thus don't expect them to stop growing any time soon. It isn't necessary to feed them as much as they want.

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/


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## ErikaMay (Feb 28, 2013)

Take a look at the tag: what is the Lysine content? Probably 0%...and in the long run that will cost you. I was using a all purpose feed for all the pigs while they were on pasture and mine basically stopped growing after months of top-of-the-charts growth patterns. I've switched back to a hog feed and I've got growth again. It would work if you have a cheap source of lysine (goat milk, eggs) but as a complete? I do not recommend.


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## littlequail (Aug 5, 2011)

Maybe i could use this as a filler? hog feed/sweet feed mix?


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## ErikaMay (Feb 28, 2013)

I had some 18% protein hog feed I started cutting with the sweet feed...it worked better than straight sweet feed, but not as good as hog. first: make sure it is 50# my feed store sells sweet in 40# bags and hog in #50. do the math: 9.75/50=$0.195 a pound cost vs.11.5/50=$0.23 a pound cost. there is a 3.5 cent difference. Really, not much. So assume you have to feed only 650 lbs of hog feed to the hogs to get them to butcher weight 650x0.23=$149.5 Then assume another 100 lbs of the sweet. 750x0.195=$146.25
So in the end you save a whopping total of $3.25! Was it worth it? Its up to you in the end, but you have to pencil out the numbers somemore.

In my area hog feed is 10 cents more than sweet, so it penciled out worth it in theory...but i probably could have butchered a month earlier if i hadn't stopped using the hog feed.


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