Starting a piggery business is exciting but like all businesses, it can be fraught with risks. We will be looking at making a small pig farm that won’t exceed 100 animals and this can of course be scaled to your desired level.
In this article we want to talk about how to open a pig farm for 50 and 100 animals. Also, we want to dispel many myths that are very common in business plans for this niche.
About The Piggery Business
The idea to start a pig farm from scratch starts with preparing a business plan. The ready-made business plan contains information on the opening of a mini-pig farm.
To implement the idea, a space is rented. You will then need to determine how to best build up your pig farm for success.
- Opening a farm with a high rate of profitability
- The population of pigs
- Profit obtained from the sale of livestock or its products
Market Analysis
A well-designed pig farm business plan is part of the success. Meat is a commodity that is in massive and daily demand. During a crisis, demand for it does not decrease. Pig meat and byproducts are in constant demand and this makes the market ideal for investment.
Of course, pricing policy plays a huge role. The main competitor of pig meat is chicken, because its consumption is constantly increasing.
Livestock in general is the segment of the market in which there is an annual growth. This trend has continued to persist over the past several years, leading to the rise of agricultural enterprises. As a result, there are investors who are ready to invest money and this allows us to oust foreign competitors from the market.
Economists make positive forecasts for the future, as evidenced by rising incomes. There are even opportunities to enter the world market.
Pig farming is now one of the most promising, profitable business. It can be negatively affected by the import of imported products, higher prices, and lower incomes of the population.
Challenges Ahead
Farmers face various challenges that are common in pig production:
- Monopolization
- African plague virus (disease in general)
- Market saturation
African plague is a dangerous virus and there is no vaccine against it. In a short period, the disease can destroy all livestock, naturally leading to massive losses in your business. If a plague focus is found, all animals are destroyed. Such measures lead to serious losses. It is not recommended to open a pig farm in those regions where there were outbreaks of plague.
Monopolization continues to grow in this area. The state is actively helping, but large farmers are out-competing their smaller competition. Small entrepreneurs have to do it on their own, which leads to a number of problems:
- The cost of production increases
- Product quality drops
- Pig breeding technology
It is important to pay attention to the following parameters
- Air humidity. Supported by ventilation. High humidity should be avoided, which leads to poor health in pigs
- Temperature. Supported at around 15-20 degrees
- 24/7 water access, especially in summer. Pregnant sows drink up to 25 liters of liquid per day
- Room area. One pig is allocated at least 3 square meters
Across Europe there is a surplus of pig meat being produced. This will lead to a contraction of the sector and a drop in prices. But like all forms of business, this will be cyclical and will come back up when the demand exceeds supply.
Required Documents
A well-designed business plan for a pig farm for beginners will help solve all the issues with starting your own business. The entrepreneur submits documents to the tax room to register the project. You can open an individual entrepreneur or give preference to a legal entity.
For validity you need to get
- An administrative order that will permit construction
- Documents to the Labor Inspectorate, State Fire Inspection, Sanitary and Epidemiological Service
- Lease agreement or for the purchase of a plot
Location – Where Is The Best Place To Set Up A Pig Farm
It is necessary to buy land from the municipality with an area of 3400 sq. m. It is difficult to build a pig farm, so it is better to turn to specialists. They will help to equip the premises according to the requirements.
You need to take care of the feeding and drinking system, take care of the fence, heating, and build ventilation to ensure that your pigs are comfortable for all seasons.
Staff – Should You Hire For A Small Pig Farm
It is necessary to select highly qualified personnel. If you open a business plan for a mini pig farm, it will indicate those specialists who will help in the development of the business. The staff should include:
- Manager – usually this role is performed by the owner of the business project. The work consists in supervising production, monitoring reporting, and personnel management.
- Accountant – he is engaged in financial reporting, keeps records of all property, and controls settlements with all suppliers, payment of taxes and other payments.
- Veterinarian – conducts an examination of animals, if necessary, diagnoses a disease, establishes the cause of its occurrence, prescribes treatment, conducts disease prevention, monitors diet, care.
- Zootechnician – is engaged in the introduction of new breeding methods, carries out the selection of animals, and monitors the regime of keeping.
- Pig breeder – monitors the condition of the livestock, is engaged in auxiliary types of work, monitors the cleanliness of the premises.
- Handymen – cleans, helps to drive cattle, and is involved in field work.
Equipment – What You Need For Your Pig Farm
You can take a business plan for a pig farm for 10 heads to calculate more livestock. You should look for a pig farm outside the city limits. It must meet certain requirements:
- Have the required area
- Be located far from water
- Necessary equipment for serving animals
For a pig farm you need to buy
- Drinking bowls – shovel or cup. They are mounted next to the feeders.
- Feeders – feed is fed in metered doses or constantly, there is an opportunity to choose.
- Ventilation – will help maintain the desired temperature, supply air.
- Manure disposal system – an affordable option is a self-alloy system that is easy to make yourself.
Livestock & Feed
A modern pig farm business plan with calculations, with a detailed description, may be of interest to many novice entrepreneurs. For a small farm, you need to purchase 50 head of cattle, of which a larger number will be sows. It is better to make purchases from breeding farms. First, you need to find out which breeds are resistant to diseases, how they gain weight.
Pig nutrition must be properly organized and of high quality
- Juicy feed – potatoes, carrots
- Concentrated – barley, rice and other cereals
- Greens – alfalfa, clover and other herbs
- Food of animal origin.
Sale Of Products
The business plan for opening a pig farm should reflect the marketing paths for the products. When the channels of implementation have been selected, you can begin to sell your product. The first profit is noted only for the marketing of several generations of pigs.
Selling adult pig meat is generally less problematic. Problems may arise with the sale of young stock. Generally we’d advise against the sale of piglet meat. The cost and production of piglet meat is generally not profitable.
According to the IFA the sale of pig meat is €1.56 per kg (as of Jan 20th 2021) and according to the AHDB the sale of pig meat is £1.39 per kg (as of Jan 23rd 2021).
Advertising For Your Pig Farm
To beat your competitors, you need to offer quality products to consumers. But even in this case one cannot do without an advertising campaign. One of the most effective ways to attract buyers is word of mouth. You need to use other advertising methods that will help interest consumers:
- Advertising in institutions where technologists study
- Opening an online store
- Inform companies that sell pig products
- Announcements in the media
If you open an online store, you need to make sure that its pages provide maximum information about the products that would be useful to potential customers.
How To Open A Pig Farm
Is it possible to organize your own business without attracting borrowed funds? Sure you may. The level of average wages today is so low that these funds are clearly not enough for a normal life of an average person. Therefore, many, in addition to their main job, organize their own small business. Pig Farm, Mini Pig Farm is one of the types of home business.
So, let’s start with a description of the construction of a pig farm. The mini-pig farm consists of two sections, each of which has a separate paddock. For the construction of the pig farm itself, various building materials were used – logs, boards, slabs. The floors are made of concrete (30 cm), tarred boards are laid on top in two rows.
The walls are double and insulated with foam. The roof is plank, pitched. From above, the roof is covered with roofing felt and slate. The pig farm should be facing south with windows and doors. The paddock is located in the open air, but it is also equipped – it has a flooring made of boards and fences made of picket fences.
In the first section, adult pigs are kept, in the second – weaners or a sow with a litter, a boar.
When drawing up a plan for a pig farm, it is advisable to provide for the area of premises not less than the following dimensions:
- Room 1 – 5.3 m2
- Room 2 – 6.4 m2
- Walking 1 – 10 М2
- Walking 2 – 8 М2
All rooms and walks, for convenience, must communicate with each other. In addition to the main entrance to the mini-pig farm, which was built in one of the departments, the entrance should also be through a walk. The pig farm plan in the drawing looks like this:
What Rations Of Feeding & Care
- The main feed on a mini-pig farm is food waste, which is divided into meat, fish, grain and vegetables
- Yeast feed is prepared from most of the food waste – 10-15 g of yeast is added to a bucket of thick mixture, which should fit
- In summer, yeast waste is mixed with finely chopped nettles and maral root leaves: 1 kg
- Waste, put 0.4 kg
- Green nettle and 0.1 kg
- Leaves of maral root
- To this mixture is added table salt (daily rate up to 30 g), sifted bone ash (up to 20 g) and trace elements
Pigs are fed 3 times a day: at 8, 14, and 20 hours. After each feeding, the pigs are allowed to walk. In summer, there are always troughs with drinking water and green grass, which adult pigs eat up to 8-10 kg per day.
While the animals are on the walk, the premises are cleaned, the floor is sprinkled with fine sawdust. In extreme heat, a large iron trough (140 x 70 cm) with water (5-7 buckets), with the addition of 1-2 grams, is installed on a walking course for swimming.
Potassium Permanganate
Once a week, pigs are brushed with warm water from a watering can. At this time, the pigs are fed the waste of the garden and the garden – the carrion of apples, pears, overripe cucumbers, tomatoes, small potatoes, and fruit pomace.
Harvesting feed for a mini-pig farm for the winter: Harvesting feed begins in June.
- For the winter, nettle brooms and leaves of the maral root are dried. After the first frost, mountain ash is harvested, which is stored frozen in winter. Harvested for the winter and hay at the rate of 0.5-2 kg.
- On every head per day. All this is fed in winter in a mash, with the addition of an oil concentrate of vitamin D3 – one drop per pig per day. Jerusalem artichoke is grown for feed for pigs, which is high-yielding and gives 5-7 kg.
- Tubers with a bush and carrots. For the mash, as a valuable addition, the maral root is grown.
- Maral root is a perennial plant with large leaves, reaching a height of 2 m. Its greenery increases the vital activity of the body, and in terms of nutritional value it is not inferior to clover and alfalfa.
Disease Prevention Measures
Pigs are easily exposed to stress – during weaning of piglets from the sow, rearrangement in an unfamiliar room, due to noise and other reasons, and maral root regulates the nervous system.
Feeding green mass of maral root as part of your pigs’ diet is a good prophylactic remedy for many diseases, and not only anxiety.
Boil for 20-30 minutes. An hour later, the broth is ready and added to feed or drinking water at the rate of ¼ glass per day per pig. The broth is added to the feed for 2 weeks, and then a 10-day break is taken. A week before the slaughter, stop feeding the maral to your pig herd as it can affect the taste of the meat.
For the prevention of stress, an aqueous infusion of Valeriana officinalis is also used. Valerian has a calming effect and is given in water to pigs between maral root applications.
How to prepare Valeriana officinalis for your pigs
8-10 g of dry crushed Valerian roots are poured with two glasses of boiling water, closed with a tight lid, and placed to cool naturally. The daily dose is 100 ml. infusion per pig.
Frankly, this system of pig feeding on a mini-pig farm is quite troublesome. If you have a large amount of potatoes and mixed feed, pigs can be grown more easily and cheaper. However, if you want more meat than lard, then this mini pig farm and feeding system might interest you as it will increase the quality of your pig meat.
Raising pigs is certainly not a simple and easy undertaking. It requires solid investment and hard work. In addition, the profitability of pig breeding is highly dependent on the right approach to business and a clear business plan, which, unfortunately, is neglected by many. Meanwhile, the success of the enterprise mainly depends on the accuracy of calculations and skillful management.
I once knew someone who decided to get into the piggery business who was an experienced dairy and beef farmer. When he bought his swine herd, about 100 animals, he did everything right but the herd got infected by foot and mouth disease and he had to cull the entire herd. Several thousand dollars gone down the drain.
Pig Farm Business Ideas
A pig house can be built from scratch, or it can be reconstructed on the basis of an abandoned farm, of which there are many left in the countryside.
Renovation is usually not cheap, however, in any case it is cheaper than building. When equipping a pig farm room, the need for at least two separate rooms for adult pigs and sows with litters should be taken into account.
How to set up a pig farm
Each room should also have a separate walk, for the safety of the offspring. It is also useful to make a separate room for the boar, if conditions permit.
A prerequisite for the premises of a pig farm
- Water
- Electricity
- Heating
It is also necessary to ensure good ventilation of the room. That is why it is preferable to use the old premises of the farms, since the supply of communications to the newly built ones can be unaffordable in terms of costs. For heating the pig farm, you can use electric convectors or solid fuel boilers. This item of expenditure is also significant in winter, but it is impossible to do without it: the health of the pigs is the key to the success of the enterprise.
It is also necessary to provide conditions for storing feed, it is best to allocate a separate room for this. Feeding bins are usually used with feed lines, although conventional feeders can be used. Feeding automation requires additional investment, but it allows you to save on personnel in the future. Naturally, you need to take care of automatic drinkers.
One of the problems of the pig farm is the problem of cleanliness in the room.
Here, again, there is a dilemma – either initially equip the premises with a manure cleaning system, or subsequently spend money on maintaining cleanliness.
The correct choice of option is possible only with the help of accurate calculations when drawing up a business plan
The initial costs should also include the purchase of pigs and feed. These are significant costs, which largely depend on the choice of pig breeds. And when choosing breeds, it is necessary to be guided by the results of marketing research to study demand and competition.
Current costs, in addition to rent, utility bills and staff salaries, include the costs of veterinary services, the constant purchase of feed and transportation costs.
The cost of the pig breeding business is quite high, but the income from the sale of finished products is quite substantial.
Arrangement of premises for 50 heads
The area of a small farm for a specified number of piglets should be at least 250 m². This number includes the space required for one animal, paddocks, and walkways between compartments, vestibules and utility rooms. The entire territory is divided into three main zones:
- For boars
- For sows
- For piglets
There must be enough space between them for personnel to move and the wheelbarrow to pass. In addition to the main sectors, the building should be equipped with vestibules and areas for walking pigs, as well as heating, water and an air filtration system.
Purchase Of Pigs & Feed
Buying piglets is an important and responsible business. Before purchasing a large batch, it is best to buy 50 pieces and try to grow them. If everything goes well, you can increase the livestock by 2 times in a natural way, as well as buy the required number of individuals.
It is important to consider that pigs are divided into three groups according to the type of end product:
| Desired Meat | Colouring of Pig | Ideal Breed of Pig |
| Bacon and Ham | Piglets are light in color, have an elongated body, a developed loin and sides. | Landrace, Vietnamese pot-bellied, Don meat, Duroc |
| Greasy Meat | Individuals are very light, almost white. | Brazier, Pietrain, Large White, Murom, Breit |
| Lower Quality Meat | Predominantly black pigs, | Ukrainian speckled, Mirgorod |
You will want a ratio of 10:1 for sows:boars. You should not go to the first farm you come across for the piglets: it is better to visit several complexes and study the pedigrees of animals. Reduce your risks that can come with interbreeding by buying your stock of piglets from different farms.
For more information on pig breeds and pig nutrition and needs, click on the relevant topic.
Main selection criteria to bear in mind:
- Fertility of sows
- Tolerance to diseases and infections
- Adaptation of pigs to climate conditions
Conclusion
Pig breeding has several advantages. Nature has endowed these animals with unique properties. This is almost the only species of mammals that are highly productive. Pigs are able to grow meat quickly and in a short time.
A newborn piglet weighs no more than a kilogram. After 7 days, it reaches a mass of 25 kilograms. The pig reaches a weight of 150 kg per year. The animal gains most of this weight in the first months of life. In addition, pigs reproduce rapidly.
In favorable conditions, the sow can give birth twice a year. She usually brings more than ten piglets. On average, this is 12-14 cubs. For a year, this turns out to be about three dozen pigs, which in 24 months will weigh more than 100 kilograms. This makes it possible to get about four tons of pork. If there are more sows on the farm, production will increase accordingly.
Another indisputable plus in raising pigs is their diet. They eat very simple foods. Almost all the food they eat is absorbed by the body. For example, a chicken only absorbs a fifth of the nutrients in its feed. From this it is clear that pigs need less food than ordinary pets.
As for the sales markets, there will never be problems with them in any country. Pork is a fairly popular product. In markets and supermarkets, meat, lard and bacon are always in demand by customers. Now it remains to figure out how to raise pigs and what you need to open your own farm.
Breeding process
The most profitable period for fattening pigs is spring-summer-autumn. During this time of year, animals can be kept in lightweight rooms, and the costs will be significantly lower. Growing pigs at home is divided into several types:
- Three-phase system. These are farms with a closed production cycle. Here piglets are received and fed until slaughter. Throughout the entire time, animals move from place to place several times. This puts the pigs under stress, which affects the overall weight gain.
- The two-phase technology was invented to reduce the impact of livestock movement on their productivity. When using it, selection and separation of piglets occurs only at the age of four months. Moreover, until this time, they are placed in the machine tools. After moving, they fall into a group stall.
- Single-phase technology is the most productive. It does not provide for any movement. Animals eat quietly and gain weight steadily.
The most popular on pig farms is the two-phase technology. It allows you to optimize work, use team and family contracts. For more information on how to breed pigs, make sure to check out this article!
As in every business, the key to a successful business management is hard work. In this case, you have to do a research and consider every possibility what might happen. Especially research market, demand and prices, these are the main components of a success in starting a commercial pig farm. You should research breeds that are most demanded on market, hot to take care of them and also are the conditions that you are willing to offer suitable enough.
Developing an online coaching business can be a useful way to build up your piggery business as you help others design and build their piggery business. Sounds like something you want to explore some more? Check out this link here!