Thursday, July 26, 2012

Boar's Gold

Several weeks ago. end of May, our friend Duane planted our east pig pasture with Sorghum Sudan Grass. Mad Max our big Red Wattle boar and his ever changing tribe of girlfriends (we rotate the sows between our two boars) was moved into the pasture just north and planting commenced. Our plan was to plant the field and then graze our cows on it.

Then the drought hit.

The seed sprouted and the field looked great for about 10 minutes, but as moisture was sucked away, growth slowed and then stopped. The field, now 8 weeks after planting looks like this:




Very spotted germination and that which sprouted did not grow well.
But we noticed something odd in the south west part of the field. Something...tall




Seems that the Sorghum Sudan grass had an affinity for pig manure. The areas where the pigs had their large hogcienda, where they most often ate , drank, played and relieved themselves, where the straw bedding broke down and decayed,  was obviously the most fertile part of the field. And the little areas where we had placed the smaller hog huts for just one hog to use at a time, also showed immensely improved growth.



Obviously it just goes to prove that organic material such as hay and  straw, especially when mixed with the manure of healthy swine, does an excellent job of adding nutrients to the soil as well as retaining moisture.

 In simpler terms...Pig crap rocks.




7 comments:

  1. Hurray for pig poop..may you have a never ending supply.

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  2. Pig poop does indeed rock! Maybe I should get a few pigs around here then maybe my garden would have survived this darn drought.

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  3. They have proved that organic is better at survivng and producing compared to conventional.. Rodale institute has been studying that since 1980 or 81.. Very interesting stuff if you google it! ;)

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  4. It's been so dry!!! I used to raise Angora rabbits and their droppings were the best!!

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  5. Haddock's received a huge dose of compost, horse, and chicken manure this year... the results are fabulous.

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  6. My Mum always swears by manure as the best fertiliser bar none for her garden - her roses especially. Healthy animals = healthy digestions = healthy poop!

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