IsaanAussie

Is that liquid fertilizer a dark green color? My wife came home a couple weeks ago with several plastic Coke bottles filled with what she said was fertilizer.

Three similar possible sources that I know of:

1: The effluent from composting

2: The effluent from vermiculture (worm farming) - great stuff.

3: Effluent from biodigesters - fluid fraction again great stuff.

just curious

how many aspiring pigfarmers have any , yes any , prior farmer experience "at home"

Walpyk,

I have no idea on the numbers of aspirants such as myself. What I do know is it is very hard to introduce anything "new or imported" to the local methods and none of the people I have talked to understand business principles. In my case this is definitely a business proposition not a hobby, a passion or a way to help the family. So for those interested here are a few current issues for me.

I have just been around our local area again and most pig farmers still follow a very traditional "the way we have always done it" model. Feed is the best example I can give. Currently the range of basal commercial feeds are sold at around 10-12 baht per kilogram, yet the farm grown ingredients are sold at 6-8 baht. Formulating basal feeds on farm is done in Vietnam and Cambodia but not in my area. Cassava, sweet potato, rice bran, corn and chicken manure are all easy to grow or get and to process here. Even if you buy the ingedients, the 4 baht per Kg saving is signicant. At an average feed rate of 2.5Kg/pig/day thats 10 baht/pig/day or some 1,500-2,000 baht per pig to be saved.

There is an attitude of taking the easy way on all things and little analysis of costs. Again in my area, many farmers buy piglets, fatten them and then sell back to the breeder. Little if any profit seems to be made by the grower but it is easy because the breeder delivers the piglets and collects the grown pigs.

For anyone who is trying to start an operation here I would suggest that for it to at least break even, you should very carefully examine the local methods and costs.

There is a lot of off-season labour and land available in Sisaket when crops can be grown for basal feed as well as farm gate available crops which can be used. There is also small pockets of "Land Up" which are left unused for rice. You do not have to grow it yourself you can effectively contract it out.

One thing that is definitely different here is the need for a rice mill to supplement commercial feeds. Most however do not produce enough bran for more than a handful of pigs. We grow around 16,000 Kgs of rice which would produce feed for 4-6 pigs annually from their own crop if that was the only ingredient. I am yet to find a closeby commercial mill that doesn't use all the bran they produce.

Turning to the mill itself shows one of the traps. Locals mill the rice of others and keep the bran as payment. Therefore the 100,000 baht investment must be amortised over the feed produced as no money changes hands. Most use 25Baht/day/pig by substituting the cost of commercial feed. If you buy/grow alternates for the basal feed then use the 6 baht/Kg number I suggested above that is only 15Baht/pig/day. However with a 5 year amortisation period for the mill (55Baht/Day) and 10 pigs, the cost including ROI rises back over 20 baht/pig/day. The bran is not "Free" when you include the machinery and maintenance costs and depends of scale to minimise the cost/kg.

The clumsy point I am trying to make is you must be very careful of statements about "free feed if we have our own mill". Look very carefully at the returns and on-costs of the mill itself. Look into the availability of rice to mill. The mill I am looking at has a capacity of around 60 Bags (up to 3,000Kgs) per day and it appears that we will have to actually buy rice first to secure the volumes needed. That is become rice traders as well as pig farmers.

I agreed with a previous post that there is money in pig farming here. Be careful that the "real" costs are understood and be prepared to challenge the local "norms".

Isaanaussie

Next time you are in Bangkok, there is a good range of garden needs (imported and local) in the shopping area on the western side of the road along the southern end of JJ Market. Not too far to walk from Morchit 2 station. Brass fountain heads, test kits and even decent lawn mowers.

One issue with the Thai gas supply is it has a very low methane level and as there was not liquification plant last time I looked to remove most other gases, the gas has low heat value. Anyone who has been here a while will remember the abject failure of the first NG buses and the cross legal actions by the Thai government and the two manufacturers (Man and Mercedes Benz).

I dont think fertiliser production is viable yet. When LNG is produced here not just CNG that may change.

Air volume movements would be where I would look. How many times per hour do you want to change the air inside the roof? How large is the roof cavity? Multiply the two and that gives you the volume of air to move per hour, minute or sec. The relative sectional area of inlet vs outlet from the fan will determine the air speed at the inlet.

Have you considering using the whirly bird vertical extractors in the roof instead? They are efficient, cheap and cost nothing to run.

I have used such a sump pump to recirculate fish pond water. The pump and switch unit was around 1500 baht and was suspended by its power cable. You set the depth of water to activate it, both on and off, by adjusting by the length of the float arm (cable). Simple to install, Macro, Tesco, Big C etc all stock them.

What you need to check is the amount of water per minute you need to pump. Get a pump that will move that much and can lift the water over the wall, if that is your exit path. Make sure that the sump pit is large enough to hold that amount of water but not too big to limit the floats vertical movement.

I would suggest you build a filtering pit full of stones next to the pump pit and build two of three baffles so the water draining into the filter has to move under the first baffle, over the second and under the third before going into the pump pit. This will limit the crap carried with the rain water blocking up the pump.

If you dont fancy masonry work, buy a large round stock drinking concrete bowl (A segment of pipe with a base cast into in) at the local building suppliers. Use whatever you can get your hands on the segment the circular shape.

Lastly it is a good idea to put a cover over the pit. Stops rubbish, broken ankles and also most of the algae buildup.

PS. If there is foot traffic on the other side of the wall, then put a shower rose on the end of the exit pipe. Will not achieve much more than keep them guessing.

Fruity,

Plan is right, not yet proven so I'm interested in learning about local basial feed formulation. My involvement back home the base feed was purchased and supplemented with a combination of farm bi-products. Do you produce your own base feed?

I have some formulations that are used locally but they don't appear to be well balanced and there is also some witch's brew involved that I cannot work out. The most practical I have comes from Cambodia and Loas but they are usually growing native pigs and I don't know how it translates to the import breds here.

Very interested to hear what you have in mind. Can you share a few details?

Hi Fruity,

Thanks for the response. Let me attempt to answer your questions and add a few further thoughts.

Pig experience here (apart from my many cultural mistakes) .. limited personal involvement, a lot of observation and research over 6 years with Thai wife's family and in the local area, before coming here had family in the business for many years.

Labour... Good question for which I only have the family members involvement undertakings in reply. Time will tell and I anticipate a very heavy involvement from myself. Financially here in LOS? As they say "Up to you", which we all know means my money in and "their" money out.

70 Kg selling weight ... purely a matter of maths. Over that weight the feed conversion rate decreases hence so does the return. I will have limited feed growing capacity initially as well. As an aside I love bacon and dislike fatty pork. I may change to include a finishing facility up to full market weight later but this would mean another facility on land I am yet to redevelop.

Manure handling ... most raw solids will be feed through a 24 cubic metre biodigester, after processing part of the residue will be used in the fish pond. Raw sewerage doesn't do a lot for the oxygen content of the water. The liquid fraction goes to the garden and the solids are dried for fertiliser and used in composting and worm farming. Trick here is to keep the input of water into the digester at the right ratio. Biogas will be used for farm equipment and heating, no intention of piping it into the house.

Stalling system.. It is not as bad as it may seem, it is really all about reducing the labour in handing. Farrowing pens will be used to allow the piglets to escape the mother and for easier temperature regulation. The gestation pens will house the sows in their respective breeding batches or groups that allows social contact (watering/dunging/lying) within the group and mesh screens between pens allows them to see other pigs. The feeding stall for each allows regulation of individual diets and confinement for vet inspection/treatment. The weaner pens will allow sexs to be seperated and sizes to be matched to ease competition, again temperature regulation is easier in smaller spaces. Grower pens will house up to ten pigs.

The whole system is a standard All-In-All-Out Model.

The batching cycle I intend to use will target the sows being in heat within five days to a week of weaning to be able to hit 2.2 to 2.5 litters per annum. I would be interested to know what cycle periods you use?

I would be very interested in knowing what square footage you allow your pigs. Seperate rooms for pigs, wow, most Thais don't get that.... (attempted humour)

I have no plans initially for a boar but will keep you in mind as a source. I need to get more current local information on diseases before I make that decision. If I can rent a clean boar then I will probably not buy one. The local vet has good AI and immunisation credentials and is anxious to earn a regular income from our pigs.

I would be interested in talking more on a supply of weaners and gilts though. My plan is to purchase four groups, three per group at five week intervals to establish the batch flow right from the start, could you or anyone else help with this?

I would prefer to buy proven sows but may change if I can get good quality gilts or even over 20 kg piglets in order to gain a few more months of local, less complex handling experience for the "Labour" and especially myself. If I decide to buy younger pigs then we would start with higher numbers per batch and begin with the grower cycle and wait until we develop the gilts before starting breeding.

Our plans are to "attempt" a break even within eighteen months apart from the building and equipment costs, and to limit maximum cash exposure on stock and operational costs to under 500,000 baht.

Regards,

Tony

PS I like your Churchill quote

Hi PigFarmers one and all,

I plan on starting an integrated farm including pigs. I am looking for comments on my planned 4 batch system of 3 sows/batch to start with. I intend to build a rearing shed which will accomodate 4 batches of 6 sows as a maximum. That is 6 farrowing stalls, 6 weaner rooms, four six stall gestation pens and six growing pens. Target selling weight of 70 kgs.

Other associated items include biodigester, mushroom growing and composting, worms and fish farming and use of the fertiliser on both rice and crop fields.

All comments and advice welcome.

Regards

Tony

Portable Electric Concrete Mixers are readily available in Thailand. If you look in front of most any Home Mart or Builders Merchant Hardware Supply type shop outside of Bangkok they will usually have two models painted a gold or yellow on sale. I have never priced such, but they seem to take quite a bit of abuse and keep working faithfully. I have not seen any preventative maintenance on the mixer our building staff utilized for nine months and when the electricity supply failed they were able to operate the machine by hand. It could certainly be a wise investment for those who were willing to work hard but want to insure some level of proper "mixture" for various concrete needs.

Thanks for the information and will go looking at the places you mentioned.

I brought such a yellow devil some 4 years ago in Sisaket but you can buy them in any major town. Machine was 20,000 baht plus the cost of the electric motor (invest in a good unit here with sufficient HP). You couldn't kill the mixer with an axe. Family has even rented it out to local authorities at around 450 baht per day to build a new village road. Great investment. Show them how to apply grease to the drive gears.