Feeding Pregnant and Lactating Sows: Two Phases, One Continuous Decision
Feeding pregnant and lactating sows is often treated as two separate jobs with two separate feed tags, but the number you put in front of a sow during gestation largely decides how much she will eat while nursing. If you overfeed her in gestation, she…
Feeding Weaned Piglets: The First 60 Hours and What Comes After
Feeding weaned piglets is less about choosing the right bag and more about getting a pig to eat at all in the days after it leaves the sow. A weaned piglet is a young pig transitioning from sow’s milk to a solid nursery diet during a period when…
Pig Water Quality: Thresholds, Testing, and Where Water Actually Goes Wrong
Pig water quality is the chemical, physical, and microbiological condition of the drinking water available to pigs at the drinker. It covers source chemistry, contamination, and the condition of the delivery system that carries water from the well to the…
Balanced Pig Diet: How Protein, Energy, and Fiber Work Together
A balanced pig diet is not a list of numbers you check off one by one. It’s a set of relationships, and pulling on one moves the others. Make a ration more energy dense, and the pig eats less of it—so it now takes in less protein per day, while the…
Ready-Made vs Custom Pig Feed: Cost, Performance & Profitability (2026 Guide)
Introduction After 20+ years running a 5,000-head operation in North Carolina, I’ve used both ready-made commercial feeds and custom-formulated diets at different stages of my farming career. The decision between purchasing complete feeds from a…
Pig Feed Formulation Basics: Building Balanced, Cost-Effective Rations
Introduction Pig feed formulation is the process of combining available ingredients in set proportions so the finished ration meets every nutrient requirement at the lowest workable cost. Feed represents the largest single expense in pig production,…
Vitamins and Minerals for Pigs: What They Need and Why It Matters
Introduction Vitamins and minerals for pigs make up less than 2% of the diet, yet they determine how efficiently the other 98% is used. Deficiencies rarely announce themselves—they erode growth rate, feed conversion, and immunity for months before…
Understanding the Pig Digestive System: A Farmer’s Guide
Discover how the pig digestive system works. Understand swine monogastric digestion and gut microbiome health to maximise feed efficiency and herd profits. The pig digestive system is a simple yet highly efficient process that allows pigs to convert feed…
Pig Nutrition: Stages, Feed Charts, and FCR Targets
Pig nutrition is the largest single cost center on almost every hog operation in the United States, and it is also the one most producers guess at. This guide gives you published benchmark figures—daily intake and amino acid targets by weight phase,…