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What is a boar hog?
Most people who hear the term boar hog think of wild boars or pigs or simply don’t know where to place them in the animal kingdom. A boar hog is simply a male hog used specifically for breeding purposes. Here we will discuss how to raise, farm and care for the male breeder hog or boar hog. First, more about the nature of the boar hog. Most of your boar hogs can begin to breed when 5 to 8 months old. The boar can impregnate around 20 to 30 females each year. Boars will therefore get the best treatment, if lucky to be selected as such.
How do you raise a boar hog?
As we will shortly see, you will raise a boar hog in the same manner as you would farm any hog. The exceptions include that you will clearly want not to castrate the hog as some are, and keep him healthy for breeding. Though it may be an easy conclusion, you must understand the importance of choosing hogs for breeding that you would want duplicated in the offspring. If you don’t want over fat hog meat in the young, don’t use an over fat hog for a boar. If you want good breeders, use a hog with a very naturally high drive for mating.
In the professional rearing of hogs you will involve a broad team of participants. You will deal with all of the following parties: you, being the actual pig farmer or swine producer who raises the hogs, will work in tandem with these other “team members”. As an example, you will work with someone who will supply feed for the various stages of growth in the life of a hog. You will deal with a veterinarian and a veterinary supplier. Butchers and meat cutters, meat brokers and inspectors and processors to name a few will all help you in the never ending task of taking a fresh herd of pigs from birth to market (“from farrow to finish”) or, as in our case, from birth to a life of “productivity”.
What types of boar hogs should or may you breed?
Hogs obviously must be fertile to breed and females must be milkers or good milk producing pigs. Boars must have a strong sexual drive, a lightning growth rate of 6 months tops and be lean, as they are mostly fathering meat hogs. Hog meat is desirable if it is lean.
What are the breeds of boar hogs one can farm?
There are many types of hogs that can be bred and crossbred. These include the Berkshire, Tamworth, Poland China, Large Black, and Gloucester Old Spot Pig as well as the more common Landrace, Hampshire, Duroc, Yorkshire Chester White and Spotted Poland China.
More about growth stages.
The hogs when first born are weaned by their mother in a protective pen that allows for feeding but prevents the mother from accidentally killing the pigs. She could roll on them and crush or smother the smaller pigs. The pigs then are kept with other pigs of their like size and fed a growth feed to bring them to market weight, unless they of course fall into our boar hog group.
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