Friends again
Yesterday the two remaining pigs had a fight, culminating in various wounds and bite marks. They ended up lying subdued and exhausted in different pens. Being boars they had a pecking order, and when one goes the rest rearrange themselves into a new pecking order. I didn't expect them to be so quick through. I talked to them and stroked them, then cleaned them up with disinfectant and dabbed on some Sudocrem. I went out to check on them late morning and they were sleeping together in the far pen.
Boars, in fact, all male animals, generally get more aggressive as they get older. That is natural, as males in nature are solitary creatures and fight to secure access to the breeding female. Ours, however, being a traditional breed take much longer to mature and are not exposed to female pig hormones, therefore, they should not get aggressive with each other until around a year old. Hopefully, this was just a little pecking order spat but I'll be keeping a close eye on them and giving them lots of extra reassurance. I'll also increase the amount of mental stimulation in the pen by hiding bits of fruit and veg etc under the straw to make sure they're occupied.
I sat down and worked out what it cost to raise my pig to slaughter this morning. I have not included costs such as the trailer, pen hurdles or the ark, as I consider those to be reusable for many other animals in the coming years. I've never injected them with drugs to 'prevent' anything (they were vaccinated before I picked them up) and have never had the vet out. If I had, the bill below would be much higher. I've always spent time grooming them with natural powders to prevent tick and lice build up.
Purchase of one eight-week old weaner - £50
Pellet feed from 13th March to 4th September - £140
Straw - £24
Slaughter and butchery - £60
So that's £274 before additional meat processing costs - the breeder I purchased the weaners from is going to make sausages and gammon for me, which is an additional cost on top of the normal preparation, and is dependent on the final weight of the pig. I reckon the bill will top £350. I could have kept the cost down by doing the butchery myself but this is our first pig and I do not have the equipment to deal with 65kg+ of meat quickly, so Martin and I agreed that we would have the breeder do it. I could also have used less straw, but they love it so I lay it on thick.
Some people think raising your own is cheap. It probably is if you are buying top quality pork, but if you are buying bog standard pork then this is by no means cheap at all. If my pig weighed 65kg (approx, as don't know weights until I speak to the abattoir), that would mean my break even costs would be £4.21kg. Currently, three standard 'Produced in the UK from pork from the EU' pork chops (of unknown provenance) sell in Tesco for £2.43 (£3.48/kg). If I wanted to sell pork chops (I won't be!), I would charge between £7-9/kg for Gloucestershire Old Spot pork to pay me for my time and make a modest profit on top to invest in more animals/infrastructure. That's assuming no vet's bills, otherwise the profits would be gone. Traditional breeds kept in high welfare conditions come at a cost.
The vast majority of pigs in this country are kept indoors and reared in small group pens with little stimulation for such intelligent animals (most on concrete or slatted floors, not even so much as a blade of straw, because it is easier to keep clean), so anti-social behaviour proliferates due to boredom, including tail and ear biting. Add in a hefty dose of hormones after a certain point of their life, and pens of maturing pigs are considered 'a nuisance' beyond a certain point.
In the UK, we reduced the average weight required of a pig before slaughter so we didn't need to keep them as long (in 2014 ~80kg vs over 100kg in Europe) - they go to slaughter before maturity and there is no need to castrate or tail dock. We achieved a higher level of welfare. Unfortunately, the economics of pig keeping has become dire due to consumer demand for cheap pork so average pig weights are increasing in an attempt to get more pork per animal (in 2017 it had increased to ~84kg), but to do this meant they need to be, amongst other measures, kept longer and reach maturity faster. With that came the risks from hormonal-based behaviour, and in turn more producers began turning to castration, teeth clipping and tail docking again, both without anaesthetics. Also, straw costs money, and you have to pay someone to clear the spoiled straw, an extra costs the producers don't want so they go without.
As far as I'm concerned, this is unacceptable in a society that claims to be an advanced culture. This cruelty is just one of the reasons I decided to rear my own - no castration, teeth clipping or tail docking. And I don't skimp on the straw.
I know what we're doing here is a drop in the ocean - 10 million pigs are raised or come into this country for slaughter every year - and it hardly seems like we made a difference overall, but we made a difference to the lives of these three pigs as well as our own.
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