How Pigs Can Give You Beautiful Pastures | Joel Salatin

Would you believe it if someone told you pigs could be a part of healing the soil and bringing about national park-like grasslands? Joel Salatin demonstrates silvopasture at Polyface Farms and how he has utilized pigs and rotational grazing to bring about lush and beautiful fields you have to see to believe.

The "Pastured Pigs" course includes:
•17 video sessions
•3+ hours of video
•Downloadable PDF transcripts for each video lesson
•Homework PDFs for each lesson that guide you through the essential steps
•Expert insight from an award-winning farmer

The course will teach you benefits and the fundamentals of raising broiler chickens for meat on pasture for your family and for your community and includes the following subjects:
•Pig Breeds
•Infrastructure
•Herding & Handling
•Sorting
•Pasture Design
•Feeds
& More!

✅ Don't forget to subscribe for more tips on homesteading and farming

#homestead #homesteading #farming

[matthewghardy]

Joel's presence on YouTube is like a breath of fresh air. No flashy intro, no sales pitch, no fluff. He's a gift to this generation, and those yet to come.

[antonhuman]

Many thanks.
I always learn something new. Now. Moving through three times annually.

[maccachook]

People like you and gourmet farmer Tasmania is why I ended up in pastured pigs. I love seeing them getting excited everytime they're offered a new yard

[davidcarruth]

I run The woolly pig company in Scotland and we graze pigs in woodland pasture aswell except in mid upland and wetland, we are seeing some pretty outstanding results at the moment from exactly this style of rotational paddock grazing

We surveyed one of our paddocks last year and found over 120 species in the forage below the tree line and because the pasture is so diverse we don’t need to use any routine medications because the pigs self medicate with what’s available to them there in the field

We’ve actually had to ditch the electric fencing and replace it with our own creation of a fence because the pasture grows so quickly after the pigs exit that it shorts out the back fence and I was needing to strim along 100s of meters of electric fence a week to keep the pigs in

[timmurphy]

Nice Joel. With this one, you really let your philosophical lunacy shine.

[anonymous]

Do you guys think Joel's system for pigs would work in a brittle environment? Where I live, we get winter moisture in the form of snow and some spring rains, after which we may not see rain again for months on end. Rest periods for pastures is often a year. You graze it once per season and it doesn't re-grow until the following spring after it gets the chance to soak up winter moisture as the snow melts. I've watched some of Joel's pastured pig videos and your pigs take large portions of their paddocks down to bare mineral soil in the time they are in them, which then sprouts to grass after the pigs are removed. That kind of amazes me! Around here, any area the sod is damaged becomes dust and blows away and/or sprouts an unsightly and useless combination of pigweed, Russian thistle, cheatgrass, wild mustard.

I don't want to let my pigs out of their stinky moonscape of a pen because I don't want my sod to be damaged and erode or turn to weeds. That makes me think maybe I should sell out of the pigs altogether and focus more on cattle, sheep, and chickens because they don't damage the sod when kept moving, whereas often the first thing hogs do when given fresh ground is start rooting and digging.

I'm not trying to be one of Polyface's numerous naysayers, "that won't work here." I'm just honestly not sure if their system for hogs would. Fit the farm to the geographical environment that it's located in, right? I know their systems for cattle and chickens can be very successful in a near-desert climate. Allan Savory's books, videos, and talks about his success in transforming land in extremely brittle environments excite me when I see what is possible with proper grazing management, but he focuses exclusively on ruminants. To the best of my recollection (it's been a while since I read his book) he doesn't even mention hogs.

I do enjoy the pigs though. In the Midwest one of the alternatives to CAFOs I've read about is raising pigs on deep bedding in hoop structures year around, much the same way Polyface keeps theirs in the winter months. Maybe that's a more viable system for an area where it's difficult or impossible to manage pigs a way that doesn't harm the land.

[rosejustice]

Im trying to implement this on my farm. We are not having the same outcome regarding pasture improvement. We have Idaho pasture pigs. We have noticed that the pigs do not root at all. They graze just like sheep. We have had them for 2 years now. We did have better outcomes when we implemented multi species grazing.

[markpiersall]

Consider installing a Screech Owl nest box. Owls eat rodents which host ticks.

[RiveraDelta]

Can you do this on small acreage?

Our property is wooded. We have 2.4 acres and I’m trying to work with it.

[rebeccagrimsley]

We are retiring next year to a small farm in the Florida panhandle. I plan to grow kunekune pigs. Will your system work for sandy soil?

[skyleen]

Would this work in Southwest Missouri? We have 13 acres that are mostly wooded.

[benh]

What is the pig per acre ratio you found to be the "sweet spot"?