Vietnamese whiskers are a fairly new phenomenon for Russia and the entire post-Soviet space, but it has already gained some popularity, first as a pet, and then for domestic breeding for meat. Asian pigs came to Eastern Europe from Vietnam in 1985. Today they are actively bred in Ukraine, Hungary and Romania.
Breed characteristics
In adult females and piglets, the belly hangs noticeably, hence the name of the breed. Asian "aliens" of predominantly black color, characteristic bristles and fangs are inherent in adult boars. A wide chest, short legs, small erect ears, a slightly flattened muzzle that resembles a pug (to some detractors - a rat) - this is how Vietnamese viscous-pigs look like. The weight of an adult is on average 80-100 kg. Up to 120 kg are fed to pigs, if you need a lot of fat. Unique individual specimens grow to 150 kg.
The meat of the herbivore mumps, which is slaughtered at the age of 5 to 7 months, is soft, tender and tasty, it has little cholesterol.
If it is sold unfrozen, in half carcasses of about 20 kg each, with lard no more than 3 cm thick (this is a cleaned carcass without entrails, etc.), then for such Vietnamese pig meat the price in the Moscow region with delivery will be about 300 rubles per 1 kg.
Breed benefits
Whether dying is light and the size of an adult slaughterable pig is a moot point. But what she reaches them in a matter of months is an indisputable advantage, unless, of course, it is grown for meat or bred for sale.
Again, lovers of low-fat foods can consider it a virtue that there is no large amount of fat. However, the fat in the Vietnamese pig is still present - thin, with layers of meat, as befits a bacon, because it is not without reason that the breed is considered bacon.
A considerable advantage for breeding, which is different for pigs of the breed Vietnamese Mesopotamus, is their endurance. They practically do not get sick, are omnivorous enough, but they will not eat a poisonous plant, it is difficult to overfeed them.
It is believed that in comparison with the usual white "domestic" counterparts, Vietnamese loin-bellied pigs eat very little, but do it often. Many pig owners consider this claim a myth. In their opinion, the unit weight of animals of both breeds accounts for approximately the same amount of feed, only they have a different percentage of components.
"House" for piglets
Whiskered Vietnamese pigs (reviews of the owners confirm this) are extremely thermophilic, they grow poorly at low temperatures. Therefore, the pigsty should be warm, brick, with a warmed roof, wooden doors and windows without drafts.
The floor should be concrete with a drain for sewage, so that it is easily washed, but with wooden pallets and bedding made of straw, such “beds” for piglets and adult pigs.
To ensure good ventilation and free movement of air, the ceilings in the pigsty should be at least slightly above 2 m.
The common room should be divided into several compartments, or machines, as they are correctly called, with feeders for keeping boars, sows with babies and adult pigs separately.
"Room" with an area of 4.5 square meters. m is suitable for two pigs or one sow with piglets, and an adult boar needs a separate machine with an area of at least 3.5 square meters. m
When arranging a pigsty, one should not forget about the passages in which a wheelbarrow can pass in order to transport manure.
Russian winters are not at all like Vietnamese, so heating must be provided in the pigsty in the form of a Russian wood-burning stove or infrared heater, in any case, in the area where the sow with the babies will be the first time after delivery.
And in the end, it really turns out to be a house in which Vietnamese little pigs should grow.
Piglet content
If there are gaps in the windows or walls of the pigsty, they need to be plugged with straw, Vietnamese pigs cannot tolerate drafts and are prone to colds.
In winter, the straw litter must be made so thick that the animals can dig into it whole. Eyewitnesses say that even the patch is not visible in severe cold, but at the same time no one froze and was not sick.
Straw bedding needs to be changed frequently. Piglets, like all babies, need cleanliness. In addition, the smell of Asian pigs is not as sharp as that of native "domestic" animals, but strong enough.
Vietnamese pigs love mud baths, in them they get rid of insects and cool in the summer heat.
And the rest of the Vietnamese pigs are calm, friendly, clean and unpretentious in maintenance.
They themselves in the pigsty and corral determine the place where the "toilet" will be located, do not turn over feeders, do not dig holes, unlike white pigs, do not destroy corrals. Here's how obedient and raised Vietnamese little-bellied piglets. How much time to keep such wonderful animals in time depends on whether they are raised for fattening, for a tribe, or for fun. Smart, friendly and funny pigs are easy to train and often replace a domestic dog.
Walks in the open air
By their very nature, bell-bellied pigs are intended for life in the field, they are grazed at home, as in other countries of sheep and cows. Therefore, to grow piglets, you need to build a pen in which they need to be kept in the warm season. In the open air, with the right diet, animals grow quickly and gain weight.
Experts advise to allocate space for a pig at least one hundred square meters, if it is assumed that she will graze on their own.
The corral, like the pigsty, must meet certain requirements. It needs to be equipped with a canopy for protection from the sun in the heat and a pool for mud baths, because, like all pigs, they like to wallow in the mud and Vietnamese pigs, too-bellied. Reviews of breeders especially note this. The pool is a small pit 2 × 2 × 0.3 m in size, dug in the ground, or a simple trough filled with water. Several wooden low pillars reliably dug into the ground, about which animals scratch their backs, complete the picture of arranging the corral. The height of the fence should reach 1.5 meters. According to reviews, Vietnamese pigs are very mobile and jump high.
Russian farmers, especially in climatic zones where winters are severe enough, know from their own experience that piglets run fine in the snow and eat it with great pleasure.
How to buy piglets
Requirements for healthy Vietnamese pigs to meet:
- Price, which can range from 1.5 to 5 thousand rubles. Non-purebred neutered animals for feeding are the cheapest, at the age of more than 2 months uncastered animals are the most expensive. However, where to buy Vietnamese, white-bellied piglets, you need to decide depending on what purpose they are purchased. At the market they buy animals for meat. And in order to select pigs per tribe, you need to go to the breeder. If there is one boar in his herd, then all the pigs are close relatives who are not suitable for the tribe. Yes, and look at the sow is not out of place. By its appearance, one can determine both the age of the piglets and their health if they ate her milk.
- Healthy pigs with well-muscled muscles behave like all children, their eyes shine, they grunt and run, they behave actively, they do not sit still.
- A healthy animal should have a dry tail under its tail, a wet tail is a sign of diarrhea, from which young animals can die very quickly. By the way, in order not to cause an upset stomach, you need to find out from the seller how he fed the piglets, and continue the same feeding.
Baby food
Feeding Vietnamese lop-sided piglets is an important point in raising animals. The food system is unusual for domestic farmers and breeders who have adopted completely different rules for handling white pigs. Asian pigs have a small volume of stomach and small intestines, so they do not digest coarse feed. But at the same time, according to reviews, piglets that eat only grass on a pasture still grow not very well, and their offspring may not be viable.
The diet depends, again, on the purpose for which Vietnamese pigs are raised. Fattening for lard is traditional dry grain feed, which, incidentally, is poorly absorbed by Asian animals, and limited mobility in the enclosed space of the pigsty.
In order for the pigs to grow quickly, be strong and healthy, they need to be fed with thick porridges from ground grain, mixed feeds, grass or hay (they don’t refuse straw) in winter and always vegetables, preferably raw. You only need to boil potatoes and give it along with compound feeds. Carrion (apples and pears) can be given to animals without restriction.
Farmers noticed that Vietnamese pigs eat any grass, but most of all they love amaranth, which is known as shiritsa, as well as goat, clover, alfalfa and clover. Unfortunately, large amounts of clover and alfalfa can cause poisoning, so they are given in slightly withered and small portions.
Experienced breeders feed piglets twice a day in the summer, and three times in the winter with warmed food, with 2 and 2.5 kg of cooked food allocated per pig, respectively. And this is in addition to vegetables and herbs. According to other reviews, this figure is less than thirty percent.
Baby Pig Care
Of course, if you buy piglets for fattening, the hassle with them is less, but it is more profitable to keep a sow and a boar. A mating can be performed twice a year. The first time the sow gives 5-10, and the second time - up to twenty piglets in one farrow. Taking birth and caring for newborn animals is not as difficult as it seems at first glance. Farmers claim that Vietnamese pigs are ideal mothers. They are clean, do not destroy young growth, feed it for a long time and care for it gently. This is another problem - the sow can reach exhaustion by feeding numerous offspring. Therefore, at the age of one month, piglets smoothly and gradually transferred to other types of food.
Newborn pigs weigh up to 500 g, wild boars weigh a little more. Their fat layer is almost absent, so farmers usually install an infrared lamp nearby so that tiny Vietnamese pigs do not freeze. The reviews say that in the first two days they need a temperature of about 32 ° C. You need to apply a newborn piglet to the nipple no later than an hour after birth, otherwise it may die, because it does not have a sufficient supply of nutrients. Therefore, although the pig can cope with the birth itself, it is better to observe them in order to help in time, wipe the baby and bandage the umbilical cord.
There aren’t enough nipples for everyone, so you need to ensure that all piglets get milk equally, the weakest immediately begin to be fed artificially warm sweetened cow or goat milk, on the first day every half hour, then the interval between feedings is increased to one and a half hours.
Starting from the age of three weeks, piglets are fed with cereal feed with the addition of chalk, so that children learn to chew and get plant food faster.
By 1 month, piglets can reach a weight of 5 kg, by three or four - 10 kg and more.
All little children should walk in the fresh air. Vietnamese little-bellied piglets are no different from other babies. How much time to keep animals on the pasture, you need to decide depending on their age and weather conditions. Newborn piglets are brought to pasture for several minutes, gradually increasing the time of the "walk".
Medicines for Piglets
In the milk of a bell-bellied pig, there is not enough copper and iron, therefore, immediately after birth, on the third and tenth day of life, babies are given drugs and vitamins, for example, Ferroselenite or Ursoferran-100. "Suiferrovit", which is prepared on the serum from the blood of ordinary pigs, according to experienced breeders, causes negative side effects up to the death of young animals. In a month and a half, animals are injected with "Albendazole" from helminitis (worms). Ukrainian farmers believe, however, that it does not act on all parasites, therefore they use the “Brovandazol” Kiev preparation.
The immune system of Vietnamese fold pigs is strong, they do not need vaccination.
Profitable business
How profitable is the business and for what purpose Vietnamese pigs are grown, the reviews of specific farmers and breeders are silent. It all depends on the region and the preferences of the owners, their capabilities, including the area that can be allocated for a pigsty and a shelter for pigs.
It is believed that breeding these animals is more profitable per tribe. Since Vietnamese pigs are multiple and can produce viable offspring twice a year, piglets can be sold already at the age of one month, without spending extra money on feeding them. This business pays off, according to reviews, already during the first year.
Moreover, if you keep a couple of unrelated pigs and wild boars, then farrow can be made conveyor. In this case, it is important to establish sales, find customers who will be supplied with small wholesale Vietnamese pigs. The price in this case will be small - about a thousand rubles per head, but the costs are very low. In addition, this type of business does not need large premises, it can even be organized at the summer cottage. Most serious farmers get something like a passport for each pig - a card that contains the weight gain, the characteristics of the development of the pig and vaccination.
To some, raising Vietnamese lop-eared pigs will seem too troublesome, to others - on the contrary, but the enthusiasts of this matter believe that the effort and time spent on raising pigs is worth a hundredfold if treated with responsibility and love.
