Pasture Perfect Pigs at Scale (400+)

oh this is Nicola this is in the white snack bin we can get one big group of candy mr. brown yay mr. Brown is requesting pictures along the way huh can you get to some pictures two things I want to accomplish from this trip one learn all we can about piglet or how to breed and raise piglets for our movie and course from a culture pigs we've stopped at this scenic overlook why not mountains are so beautiful [Music] much better but I also want to take this time to be alone and spend some quality of time with this guy and if that means slowing down a little bit going and seeing the Overlook then that's what we're gonna do [Music] you then you been there done that okay ready to go we are their jnl farms Virginia this is going to be good we're gonna about to feed old fruit to the sound pigs let's go trying to figure out this what is this the Gator and John Deere Gator okay ready I'm a neutral I think I'm ready all right put the brake down no that's right oh yeah you're right all right ready there we go my sidekick assistant cartographer today what you put in the tractor right there Jordan so these are waste peaches that we are getting from a local packing shed so this is the ones that are bruised blemished not able to ship them out to a retail grocery store so instead of them being thrown away in the woods we're feeding pigs with them what's this so this is peanut waste product so this is more like a meal and dust but it can be anything from whole peanuts to hulled ones to honey roasted ones garlic ones we've had all different kinds this is just the waste stuff from a peanut props processing facility that does peanut butter or peanut you'd buy at the circus do you have to buy this yeah this we do pay for but for what we're doing here with the fruit this is real helpful to balance out their diet nutritionally so fruit has a lot of sugars and starch but almost no protein or fats whereas peanuts are very high in fat and protein so the the two ingredients mixed together helps give them a little bit more of a balanced rash and then just the fruit so we use peanuts as one of our main protein sources for all of our hog feed this one peanut mill that we work with generates 100 tons of this stuff per month as wastage so we talk about a waste problem what are they doing with the rest of it there's other farmers that buy it a lot of dairies actually will buy this stuff and heat it to milk cows because it's real high energy okay we are the only hog farm that works with them though Wow people are missing out man yep it's a good good source of protein sure oh this is Steve an acronym for simple transporter of everything vital for efficiency okay so and this is for a pig pig taking that system yeah we have a lot of pigs on pasture in Nets so instead of having an extra set of nets at each group with you know sometimes you'll see that we have eight extra Nets that we use for the entire operation so we go to move a set this is what goes out there these nets are using the new paddock pigs move over break down the old Nets they go on this and then we can just take this from group to group instead of throwing them in the back of the truck or a gator and having them all jumbled up and messed up and you forklift this yeah and this is a rubber mallet yep for when you we can't drive these by hand right usually there'll be a steel hammer there but it's a wall what's in here I'm sure it's just extra stuff still hammer would be right here yeah there's just the extra fence latere packs that they send with them some insulators yeah they're very wet pliers but they'll still works yeah yeah okay good you know what kind of nut this is off baton that the premier one so these are called quick fence yeah called quick fence which that should have though this is the 630 12 - SS for anybody wanting do you like this with this matter always you had a different one no that's all we use we also use this netting for turkeys so this is it's only premiere netting turkeys won't go over that I guess they will not wear the piglets stay in that if they are properly trained they will but we don't we don't wing pigs into this kind of stuff we use a Harper hog panel for locating pins and then we'll transition them to a wire and then to nets that needed would you change anything about Steve or you like that it's pretty straightforward I might make a little bit more of a dish here to hold the Nets in so they don't get tangled up in the forks of the tractor yeah but really it's something we threw together in an afternoon and it's worked really well yapple years now this is one of our salsa and you can see they've got a bunch of babies with them that are anywhere from two to five weeks old right now and they've just started moving in their rotation again yeah when they Faro we do have to stop they don't want to leave their nests for those didn't know when you say Farah that means first have them give birth to have pigs some pigs piglets around even and getting this snack over here you don't have that setup on purpose yeah so this is a small feeder we're have it set up as a creep feeder in that it's outside of the South paddock huh so the South can't leave the area where the fire is but the little pigs can go underneath the wire in and out as they please so we can have them on a continual feed they can start nibbling okay the midrash you ration this house okay how much do you give them a day when they're lactating like this anything about 15 pounds yes okay each and is that when they're dry it's about four is that fifteen pounds of commercial grain or this nutnut mil and it's a mixture of peaches okay so this is our regular round feet here okay several buckets of and then I'll give them that stuff okay so you're kind of considering their accounting for the weight of all that per pig in here the weight of all your peaches and no more a lactating group the peaches or apples is really just on top oh it is they're their caloric need right now is so high okay that we are still gonna give them the amount of grain that we would doesn't have the fruit and the fruits just on top of it just to give them extra milk it could help keep their body condition up we're using the fruit and the peanuts helps us reduce our costs is with our gestating sales that are drying they don't need a lot but if I have four or five pounds of apples in their belly that's a much happier mama pig then then one with just a little bit of gray okay that makes it but for these guys you know when they're nursing it's that's not the time to be stingy no the thievery just dump it to them and let them pick out okay so this is feed we mix ourselves it's about 25 percent each of corn barley roasted soybeans and peanuts hmm and then we also use a swine mineral mix from first row okay so it gives us about a 20% protein ration Wow and that's what we use for our weaning pigs are lactating animals and our small grower throwing tanks yeah so that's going right here for the piglets yeah all they can eat same thing in there and the same thing for those big girls what happens when it rains - that green that's why we only put a little bit in so okay it's about you know two days worth of eating and if it gets wet they'll eat it will knock the rest out and still falling because it could clog up if it got wet huh right that's why you can see there's basically no on today okay [Music] 21000 eating 15 pounds of feed each pushing 300 pounds of feet a day but it adds up pretty quick yeah how many sounds you got in here [Music] [Music] how are these feeders working out for you basically tack track car tires attached to wood and this is all we use for ourselves because we got tired of using the rubber made troughs big sound like this can break in an afternoon yeah so how big are these sounds [Music] [Music] on a sip for these ladies that's it for this proof okay we've got five more to go did you think about this big old pig you want to hop on the lap I think he wants to drive this thing [Music] who are these guys this is a group of guilts so these are all females that we are keeping as breeders and whores are in with them right now they're about anywhere from two to four weeks thread so there's kind of an early gestation and doing their thing where'd you learn all this Jordan so you probably faced a page when I was there but they don't breed pigs no they don't breed a lot of learning how to breed pigs one book I use my start is called dirt hog I think guy's name is I'm not gonna I'm not gonna jumble his name but you know it's anywhere you buy books yeah the rest of it is just doing research asking what other people were doing and then eight years of trial and error yeah I was figuring out what works what doesn't have you figured it out there's always something new to learn how do you keep their water unfrozen in the winter we don't use those okay so we just use the truck but I actually invented a frost resistant like a cornered a bucketeer Jordan are you ready to write a book I can't feel that confident I keep getting asked to it's about time right now how long I don't know I think it's probably finding the time yeah but you feel like you're ready I could throw something on paper and if people want to buy it then they'll they'll tell me if it's ready what would you call it the first one would probably be called farm builder there's there's a real kind of movement in agriculture right now of veterans leaving the service and getting into this type of farming okay and look or what's that next big mission okay all right and you know a lot of guys are drawn to this kind of regenerative agricultural area that there's a lot of issues that AG is confronting right now and that people are confronting as eaters and it's it's a real draw I think what's needed though are the fundamentals of how to do these enterprises at scale okay you know people try a lot of things they throw a lot of money around and then they're out of money soon whereas we've done that legwork over the last 10 years and made those mistakes and spit spent that money and have it dialed in to the point where it's very simple systems you know it's the same fence pretty much everywhere it's the same features that we use everywhere so are the real metric you look at with pigs when you're comparing what we do to the industry is your cost per space so in a commercial Sall barn where they have 2200 sows in there the cost per space is anywhere from five six hundred dollars per cell we have that cost down to about 50 nice what it costs us to keep the sal on the farm cool so and that's you know that's just an infrastructure both farms still have to have the equipment and the feed and all that but that's just the amount of stuff you got a drop on some acreage to start doing pigs this is entry for anyone yes for more people yeah okay and it can frustrate anyone to you and you were telling me earlier you're a bet yourself all the pits back out that no someone will eat it but for the most part they spit them out they get a bonus peach tree growling yep and that's probably the number one question that we get when I post pictures about peaches is aren't the pigs gonna be poisoned by the pits there's no issue with that that's because they spit them out a lot of them they're spent now avocados everything yep they're there you know a sophisticated eater in there sophisticated in pig in the same Senate that's right they they under appreciated as a vet wanting to give other vets opportunity to enter into this what is the deal there what's going on there well I'm not a vet so what do I not know that you about the JA veteran the veteran community the great experience you take away from military service is you are acclimated to doing what it takes to get the mission done you know in 16-hour days we'll do 16-hour days but I think we also have a pretty high BS meter that you know we've seen a bureaucracy a massive bureaucracy in motion and for a lot of us that's something that we want to be as far away from this week as we possibly can and I think the combination of those two things a deep sense of mission and purpose but also hey I'm the master here you know no sergeant major and telling me what to do Co and tell me what to do yeah it's all on me that notion appeals to a lot of veterans that they're not afraid of working hard they they like the idea being their own boss and getting after it I think what we are doing and certainly want to do more of is giving them the tools and training of saying this is how you don't have to go out there and try to be a Google warrior and figure it all out you know you can come see how and what we're doing is catering towards commercial-scale stuff you know this is if you want to have a commercial farm you're employing several people paying yourself full-time you know this is your deal that's kind of our niche that work they were angling [Music] Sandoz up man times up in here George we're going to hard come to the tracks a lot here too long the buffet is open a little too late this is what the pigs create for the cows not bad not bad there's sour gum sorghum it's your third set of sales yep how many sets do you have we have six I mean you're gonna have eight probably what we're what we're going and you're right next year how many acres are they using 20 acres range so we figured out that about two sales per acre is not to use overuse the word but a sustainable stocking rate for us for what the ground can take how long will they be in this pattern how long were they here they've been here what's tomorrow Monday nine days okay yeah you try to move them do you do the twelve twelve they know already okay two days ago so if you look down in here you'll see yes the pigs don't eat to see well the other things see right here here are several barley seeds huh right in there that they've already pushed into the ground and and kind of stirred around we've found out if used anything bigger than sunflower seeds they'll eat a lot of them so if you go do it with corn they're gonna eat it off but if it's something small like grass seed barley tissue cow sorghum and that kind of stuff they they can't lick it up or what a little bit that they do is in consequence so once they leave here how long of a rest is to get they won't be back here for probably four months so this will be cool to talk about because this is our experimental Sylvester yes see so this is that's the long rest now you said how long six weeks no it's been and probably three months pretty much need probably and that's I can see stuff you've planted behind them coming up bushy steps called carpet weed yeah and it just naturally comes up and then we've got some kind of minty type of stuff not sure what that is but they will in a week turn it from that into what you said and what we see here that's set you said seven days this is not Daria but um okay so this is nine days you've you what you call it over over seated right and then that's what this is gonna look like yeah in about a month this rafts we you know ankle height coming back up and then you know twelve but they'll be a little bit longer before they come back around because they'll Barrow in between now and then so probably late fall when they come back around and it'll be knee deep barley alright is your goal to to clean out this canopy some or do you care yeah no this is our long-term that your go this makes you really that's your happy place that's right that was a three week project in February where we had a rental excavator in there and cut out we you know probably cut out sixty seventy percent of the jump trees that were in there yeah and so what's left is black walnut Hickory oak couple Hubble species of oak you know things that are gonna drop nuts that the pigs can eat and then tagging in what we do with the cows this type of area we can actually bring the cows through as well just take a good look at that though that's an older version what I'm trying to do that's an older version of what I'm doing with my forest e-cigs see that 70ish percent pasture 30% forest that's an interesting way to protect the water tower group number four number four we're gonna service all six tonight yes I think so okay yeah one group's got to be in piglet yeah okay yeah we've got another group that has piglets okay to go besides that first one okay yeah the first one yeah now these are our next one to do so they're due September 12 okay window opens no thermos that's why we don't take the pigs out to dinner is anybody else using your waters yet maybe I did a video put it on youtube showing how we did it oh it will do that DIY yeah I don't know if anyone's tried it yep oh you got a YouTube channel yeah they're more than welcome to okay what's your YouTube channel yeah barn builder farm building how often do you post uh it depends if it's the winner I'll do something every week oh nice this time of year you might hear me once a month kind of thing okay yeah I don't know about this Jordan we're all gonna have to go check that out farm builder on YouTube yeah good so it's a lot of just how to you're doing this stuff more at a commercial scale that we're operating at butchering tutorials I think one of our most viewed videos is how to corral and load pastured eggs you know getting like a group of 40 that would be good to see I think I gotta go check that up yeah okay we're fighting the thunderstorm here we have to speed up less questions today more tomorrow just so we can beat this rain if if we get chores done we can maybe go back and look at the shelter's preparing having piglets cakes at number five getting the the full ration backdating pigs getting full ration because they have their piglets a lot of Nursing when you're nursing ten babies yeah so basically you guys get all you can eat [Music] [Applause] you guys can't topple that thing so I see you working on your relationship with these pigs right now just spoiling them a little bit they love the look how they sit still when you start spraying them they love it cuz they can't quit that's right so does it oh no yeah yeah pigs are various they are do you have okayed and everything act or not yeah so this this net will keep the piglets in better what's up - hey Belle is that leftover from winter I'm so these are junk hey so again something that is a waste product that a lot of guys to make hey have too much just have it sitting on the edge of the woods it's going bad after two years so we can come in and get it real cheap or if they're making hay and it gets rained on and ruined they're happy for us to come in and give them a salvage price on it and then we can use it for bedding for the pigs and by farrowing out here when the pigs leave the Haida stays and it will break down and help build soil wait a minute the Mamas gave birth out here mm-hmm okay yeah in the summer they cool if it's you know if it's above a night temperature of about 40 degrees we'll let them Farrow in the woods or on the field and so what we did here is we'll set some of these round bales out in different spots and that way this out can pick out whatever round bale she wants she'll tear some of it apart and make a nest but there'd be any way to keep piglets in on pasture not unless you are using a very tight permanent fence okay but that's the beauty of this system is we don't they definitely close to wherever their sow is yeah honestly feral here of the property you know they'll roam 50 60 yards away from where the Salazar but not hurting anybody know where is your market for some much pork we move a lot at retail ourselves with the piglets there there's not not many farms that I know of that are that are doing a pastured based Pig I guess or you know pasture perfect Pig at scale so if you're buying piglets you can find 6-8 somewhere but you can't pick up the phone and get a hundred and so that's the market we're going after are these larger you know sometimes nationally known labels that are doing direct to retail but they don't have a faring component okay and so we're going to those farms and say hey you guys need 800 piglets a year that's something that we can do nice I like it so right now we're really yeah well people are already talking to us about oh boy you know one two three years down the road okay a storm is right on us now we're gonna get to see one more thing this evening and then we're rained out [Music] you ever ridden drove a side-by-side get back on the trail it's gonna get harder I just got it I'm pretty sure look Jonah rainbow and then it ran to south and we could see a beautiful rainbow like that I think the Gold's right there Jonas you want to go get it at least okay we're at the Broad Airbnb whoa Jonah we're at the rainbow bro yeah look at that view too man what so fun okay oh shoot I do have the key what nothing hey we get a king bed together big king bed big living room case we want a fire they got the big screen TV going for us they got a sight deer head nice living area ooh a bathroom ooh I like that whose bathroom Jonah fancy I like the wood sinks oats cool telephone old-school telephone telephone look at this little bar kitchen American I don't that show still on comforters Jonah we're gonna have a hard time getting up at 5:30 you know the secret to going to bed and getting up by 5:30 [Music] going to bed by 9:30 that's the secret to getting up at 5:30 go to bed at 9:30 we're talking to everybody on FaceTime look I look at the rainbow did you guys get there I get to see the rainbow nice rainbow okay who is it Jonah done we got our fried chicken [Music] start with a good night's sleep in that how'd you sleep his expertise at least yeah he did he moved a lot and stuff right Omni gonna make some broth of today for later and our thermos is gonna make some fried eggs from our farm and sausage wherever we go our farm goes with us you ready for the day yeah more piglets this morning all the face farms after that we're gonna go look at their turkey go gobbler I think they call it and get some inspiration for that for our turkey Shah and go home you ready to go see some more pig stuff we just did epic interview with him for an hour talking about breeding breeds farrowing that was good that's going in permaculture pigs I want to choose the Gator over it the other side both sides we've had other brands but we've gone with the Gators because they are the simplest machine Oh pasture piglets two months old yeah there's seven nine weeks old and they were weaned off their scythes last week put out here on our weaning pen and so they're you know away from mom and exploring the the party life together wow that's crazy they're only two months old right now and you're gonna harvest them at seven ish months about eight months out from now till pork chop and bacon time they're they're they're very timid right now yeah but the sounds they let you they handle them yeah they're timid and curious so they they want to come up and take a taste of the boots but they're a little too scared to try to do that if you sit down in here for a few minutes they'll be chewing on your clothes and enjoying themselves they're munching on the clover that's bonus for them yep and oh is that there where they were last week yeah a group of 6070 piglets can do in a week as they'll take it from this you know nice pasture and they will turn it into they'll take it down to the dirt and so just like we do with the sows will come in and over seed the paddock okones before we move them and you know right now you can't see it but there is in the dirt here and you know you come back a couple weeks from now and this will be back to grass like it never happened so they were right here a week ago they're right here three days ago three days okay two weeks we've seen some action some hot accident yeah something that's starting to come back up you know it is August it's hot and dry yeah might not get it as fast and do you run castor hair eventually or just you know this is cow pasture so when we bring the cows here we'll just put a penny around the pigs to keep the cows off and okay you can see here and then further back there and I'll find to the hill it's gonna look like this again yep I've been hit by pigs yeah we've looked amazing if you look right over here this is some of the sorghum that was seated in by a bigger group of feeder pigs that's up on the other side of the field right now because we're using the pasture as you know as a receptacle for all the nutrients that the pigs are putting down we can also bring in the seeds and then the other have that influence of the cows at the end where they're harvesting the forage because they are the best converter of forage into meat so it's all good it's all working together in a symbiotic fashion sorghum and cows this love it this is candy to cows yep and this will get 8 feet high if we let it and this is a real high sugar forage for cow so they'll come in and just mow this right down do they love it at API they'll they'll eat it at any height yeah so instead of having forage for your herbivores that's you know 6 inches 12 inches high by using the the pigs we now can have 8 feet worth of forage so if you think about it we were getting a multiplier of our biomass per acre than using the pigs that we now have forged much higher or the the herbivores to harvest yeah because you can't just go in a cow pasture and throw this down I need some disturbance first yeah you need a disturbance so either you're using a drill okay behind your tractor and you're running it back and forth grooming it and planting the seeds or you use the pigs and we're just out here with a little hand spinner just yeah broadcasting seed and they stir it in and what happens happens so for us it's a we're using the pigs to be a planting tool and a tillage tool instead of having to spend a lot of money down at the equipment dealer nice I like it so they're the the pigs breakdown plan is a lot more delicious than than a repair bill yeah and then come down in front of the house because we'll put all the theatres and ones off we don't even worry about the little little piece up behind us okay that's in turn Charles mr. Charles okay he's got the intern I'm gonna bring him a line for the pit time magic it's where they removing these big old sow across the street over here [Music] what's a typical day look like for you hours wise this time of year we start at 6:30 in the morning with our little meeting just outlining what's going to happen for the day do chores that middle chunk of the day is available for movement projects whatever else we have going on and typically will be done by 5:30 6:00 in the evening so I mean we're we're doing 12-hour days right now but for us it feels pretty normal yes whatever your conditioning is so it's a 16-hour days that's up whenever the 16-hour days those those would be days when we're butchering chickens so we're starting earlier aiming going later or if there's a staffing issue you have a couple people are on vacation we had something a couple weeks ago where one guy basically quit over the weekend so we're missing a key player real fast and so everybody else we've got to step up and get it done because animals still need to be fed whether there's three people or one person here or twenty people go toes done you guys ready for this move it's coming up there so ready for this move only they're just gonna walk right over how you gonna get these stragglers up here down there with the other group you do have a few stragglers and we either just let them figure it out or a little push them over what's your name Sarah [Music] what's the best part about working here being outside and at the end of the day just being the work begun there comes up there did [Music] I don't hear all the way you're the bold one right where are you supposed to go oh another break out there just let them take their time come on you see your buddies over there fresh grass there you go there you go ladies it's gonna be patient nothing don't panic good there they all go [Applause] we've got one here that won't go just want while your buddies are over there sometimes we'll be moving across the road they have something about a road that they don't like [Music] she's broke off in the wood I understand that all her buddies are over here in the forest okay they got our back up towards the what we're out here though they even seating in the forest and it's coming up nice [Music] they normally give you that good of a workout every now and then with this particular one we made a mistake that we had a cow fence laying on the ground that was in the weeds we just didn't see it but they see it and then when we cross a road it's always a little bit of a hang-up they have about going across that kind of space I'm pretty sure that particular sow she did the same exact thing last time we put him across the road so she's a special she's getting marked she's looking delicious more and more every day about everybody's across okay button it up and they look happy we'll be down here all right Jordan Laura bye-bye family bye everyone the total stranger ran with absolutely again people want to find out more about you where do they do sure on YouTube farm builder Instagram Twitter Facebook lookup farm builder you can find our farm Jane L green farm I'm just hit us up on Google Facebook Instagram all those places so alright we're out in the digital spaces okay we'll do it you got to these days yes sir let's see what you're doing all right guys do check out his staff didn't know he had a YouTube channel I'm gonna be checking that out let's go check it out let's give him some love I think he said he's at 8,000 subscribers opens up the world to him on YouTube he can get to 10,000 can we get him 10,000 subscribers let's do that let's give him some love link to him down the description he's working hard out here oh that would just that would just make his day let's do that you ready to go okay Polyface here we come we are at Polyface now yes we stocked up on some turkeys got a couple of turkeys from them by the way they're shipping now Polyface YUM yes so when I can't grow it I know where to get it oh we found Jonah did you come here to bulldoze porn yeah okay get in we love this let's go see the Goblet you go I think they call it after a long walk we found it we're wanting to see this godly go and make one for home Scott Helms dead scale moveable wait just one person pretty much a turkey shop we're gonna make a turkey shot y'all secret's out we need to get some inspiration take some measurements all right how are we gonna get over Jenna look at the size that grit in that tub these guys look like they're about ready all right here's a low spot Jonah you're gonna stay here shade canvas that's all they knew they don't need water protection but they didn't need sun protection I started hanging out there and but you you guys seem to be okay you're out here it's smoking hot right now guys smoking on okay I'm gonna say those perches are probably 10 12 inches apart all right I'm gonna get in there measure it [Music] I'm in camera a little bit I don't want to scare anybody cause I'm gonna jump over the fence let's look at this thing just a shade canvas underneath I believe there's 500 in this with 12 about 30 drugs or something like that we can do the math 8 inches didn't you snap between perches no I think we're gonna do this with a jigsaw you're gonna get out I can't watch at that you kidding what got my inspiration it's not gonna look exactly like that because I think we're gonna line count for maybe 20 amazes me maybe raising 20 turkeys so leave my math right we can do a 4x4 shade structure like that shade / / structure gonna build one for the soon because I want to use one for the guineas I will wait you see your golden smile feel of a thousand kisses oldest day I reach up to whoa well we made it safely back to the car rental return Rebecca should be here any minute - Jonah's got to go to the bathroom for the third time okay can you wait till we get home till mom gets home [Music] again [Music]

Channel: Justin Rhodes

Views: 149,678

Rating: 4.9410148 out of 5

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Id: kRZBJvPdaUA

Length: 44min 11sec (2651 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 24 2019