Have you ever wanted to start a pig farm business and you didn’t know how to start?
This article contains the necessary information about starting a pig farm, sustaining it, and getting profitable returns from your pig farm.
Do you ask yourself “how much profit can I make from a pig farm? Can a pig farm be profitable? Is running a pig farm worth it? How easy it is to manage a pig farm? How do I start a pig farm business?” I will answer all those questions here.
The first thing to do before starting a pig farm is to conduct a feasibility study on the pig farming business.
Below is a step-by-step guide, instructions, and procedures on how to start a profitable pig farming business, especially for beginners, with the capabilities of expanding soon.
Table of Contents
How to Start a Pig Farm Business
- Setting up Your Pig Farm: Of course, the first step to starting a pig farming business is to build and set up your farm, to be able to do this perfectly, I would recommend watching Youtube videos and reading other articles based on the topic.
- Stocking Your Pig Farm: The second step to starting a pig farm business is the buying of pigs, some farmers decide to start with piglets, but the most important things to check are the health of the new pigs, their yield, their hereditary, and their disease resistance capabilities.
- Health care: You have to take good care of your pigs to ensure quality farm yield, by deworming them regularly, ivermectin is the most recommendable, and also inviting a veterinary doctor over to examine at least once in three months even if nothing is wrong.
- Feeding: A pig farmer must ensure to feed his pigs regularly and also provide them with a lot of freshwater daily, piglets are not compatible with so much protein feed, so they should not be fed with more than 20 percent of protein in their daily meals.
- Breeding: At six months of age, pigs are mature for reproduction, before this period you as a pig farmer should have made adequate preparations for the arrival of new piglets.
- Prenatal care: They pregnant sows need to be kept away from the other pigs on the farm and put a special diet for about a month before they give birth, it takes about 114 days for a pregnant sow to give birth, it is advisable to keep track so you know when to expect new piglets.
- Postnatal care: After the birth of the piglets, the sow should be taken care of, the piglets are then placed under intensive care for 8-10 weeks, after that they get raised normally.
Advantages of Pig Farming
- Pigs have the ability to consume and convert inedible substances like forages, feeds, waste products from food processing, meat byproducts, and other garbage into usable and very nutritional food, most of the things pigs eat are not eaten by other farm animals and humans.
- Pig rearing is cost-effective as pigs are omnivores and eat nearly every organic substance available, they are also more resistant to diseases that affect most other farm animals.
- Pigs have fast growth and reproduce at a faster rate, a sow gives birth to about 10 to 12 piglets per year, sows can also have two litters yearly.
- Pig rearing brings in high returns on profit, with little monetary input into the pig farming business, you get high profit at the end of the day.
How to Make Your Pig Farm More Profitable
This section contains information on how to invest less money into your pig business and make more profit. Below is a step-by-step instruction on how to make your pig farm more profitable:
- Research your target market
- Types of pig farm
- Herd performance
- Estimate sales
- Buy an existing business.
Do A Research on Your Target Market
You have to estimate the type and number of customers who might buy your products to ensure that your pig unit is as successful as possible. This is particularly important if you are looking to add value to the animals you produce by selling directly to the public.
If you are intending to supply to large concerns, contact them to get some idea of the price and expectations you would be expected to agree and qualify for before they can go on a contract with you. You should also make requirements as regards feeding requirements, penalties you might receive if your animals fail to reach specified requirement qualities.
If you plan to make direct public sales, either through your own outlet, through a local merchant, or another farmer, you must make inquiries into the requirements of doing your business and selling to the public before you start investing in the pig business.
You should also make inquiries into the interest of the local market; you have to find out if they prefer adolescent pigs to adult pigs, also know if they prefer to buy the pig dead or alive, if you successfully find out about al these then you are good to start a pig farm business.
Estimate Your sales
To make sales estimate for your pig farm business, you have to consider: the selling price, the supply of your pig farm, possible ways of making income apart from sales of pigs, your marketing experience, possible accidental occurrences, increased mortality.
Types of Pig Farms and Profitability Rates (UK)
There are two types of pig farming in the UK, they are indoor production and outdoor production. Indoor production has shrunk in popularity in recent decades, indoor production currently accounts for 60 percent supply of the pork market in the UK, indoor herds may be intensive or semi-intensive.
Indoor pig farming has sow mortality of 6 percent, the sows have about 2.3 litters yearly on average, natal mortality of 11 percent, and natal survival of 27 piglets per sow.
Outdoor pig farms have grown in popularity in recent decades, outdoor pig farming currently accounts for 40 percent supply of the UK’s pork market.
Outdoor pig farming has sow mortality of 4 percent, the sows have an average of 2.2 litters yearly, natal mortality of 13 percent, and a natal survival of 23 piglets per sow.
Conclusion
This article has answered all questions about how to start a profitable pig farming business anywhere you are in the world, pig farming business has proven to be one of the most profitable businesses in agriculture.
Recommendations
- How to Make Your Home More Eco-Friendly.
- How To Reduce Your Business’s Carbon Footprint.
- Innovative ways to improve your farm’s income.
- The most important thing about biodynamic farming.
- Top 15 Endangered Species in the Philippines,
