In this article, am going to discuss some facts with you on how to start a pig farming business successfully and make huge profit from it, pig farming is a lucrative and wonderful business that is popular day by day. Pig is very popular as there are around one billion pig around the world at any given time. Pig farming is defined as raising and breeding of domestic pigs, it is a branch of animal husbandry. The juvenile pig which is the child-pig is known as the piglets and where the pigs are raised is known as piggery or pig pen.
Pig are raised primarily for food e.g pork, bacon, gammon and sometimes for their skin. This is not to say that pig can be reared everywhere, it is a taboo in some places like Northern Nigeria because of their religious belief against pig, so you not market your pigs in the northern Nigeria. In this our Nigeria, there are three breeds we rared, we have local breed, foreign breed and cross breed.
Local pig breed are those breed of Nigeria origin while white breeds are those breed from foreign countries and the cross breed are those pig's breed gotten after a foreign male pig mate with a local female pig or vice versa. Now, to start this business, it could be confusing for a beginner but I will take you through a simple step by step method so that it could be simple to start up.
Here Are The Steps To Start A Successful Pigs Farming Business In Nigeria Without Any Stress
1. Size Of The Piggery You Want To Start With And The Land Location
The size of your intending pig farming business is important, the location of the land you want to use to start up the business and the size of the piggery you want to start with. The planned size of your pig farm will determine every other decision, the pig pen, the feeding and even the target market. If you plan to use somewhere at your backyard as the pig pen i mean the pig house, it means you are planning to use a little pig farm, it will not be possible with a large scale piggery business unless you get a good land and build the pig pen on it, that one will be a large piggery business.
2. Building The Pigs Pens Which Means The Pigs House
So to start on a medium scale commercially level, you may consider half or a plot of land. Pigs love to congregate together and if half a plot accommodates certain number of pigs depending on their sizes, don't expect that a plot of land will naturally accommodate multiply by two of what half plot accommodates. The best way when constructing a pig's pen is to make it square, not rectangular in shape. When you use rectangular pig pen, it's not going to give you the best in your pigs management and then I will advice you that you should let the floor of your pen to drain very well and not be clay or poorly draining floor because pigs have pointy hooves that bear much weight. A clay floor can cause injury, feed wastage and can also contribute to illness when the environment is wet. You can consider concrete pens when constructing your pigs pen.
3. Research Pig Market In Your State And Also In Your Area
When starting up this business, you have to consider the marketing part of your intending business and you have to give an answer to these questions, who and who around my area will buy my pigs?, Do they buy them alive or as pork? Do people eat more pig at certain time? Are the taboo or religious beliefs against pork around here?
All these are market research which is a basic steps of entrepreneurial and must never be neglected even in pig business, so you have to answer all those questions before you can start the business, research the pig market, farming business in your area and even state before you can start.
4. Get An Healthy Piglets
You should get an healthy piglets which is the pig-children for your farm, when planning to get your piglets, make sure you find out the sources around you. Your piglets must be healthy and a few history about their parents may be of good help. You also need to be sure that they have been given the appropriate vaccines. So you should get an healthy piglets from an experienced farmer and also know about their vaccines, so you should able to get an healthy piglets.
5. Understanding Of The Pigs Vaccination
You have to understand the pigs vaccines just as it's in human and other animal husbandry, piglets and pigs are administered with vaccines either to protect them from diseases or to heal them. Pig vaccines contain antigens from viruses, bacteria, bacterial toxins or parasites. They are given to pigs usually by injection to stimulate an immune response which will protect the pigs against natural infection with the organisms from which the vaccine was derived. Some diseases like mange, lice, atrophic rhinitis, swine dysentery and so on are eradicated by vaccines and medicated and then to manage pig's vaccines, you must check the expiry date, store in a fridge, don't overstock the fridge, and don't also store food in the fridge where you keep the vaccine and also follow the instructions.
You have to get an experienced pig farmer or a veterinary doctor to help you in the area of vaccines and vaccination if its your first time in rearing pigs and as time goes on, you too will master everything you need to understand about pig's vaccine and vaccination.
6. Get Practical Pig Farming Trainings
You should get practical pig farming training or better still, you can watch the video on YouTube, you can even employ an experienced pig farmer for training and if you know any piggery around you, visit there and seek to have an experienced pig farmer to train you on how to rear pig farming successfully. So you have to get the training very well before you can start the business.
7. Start From Small
You can start from small, rearing pigs require knowledge and you have to take your time on it, if you have never rear pigs before, be sure there are many things you don't know about pigs and their ways of life, pigs diseases and sicknesses and their growth rate. So my advice for you in starting up this business is to start from small especially when you don't know anything about pig farming and you don't have a partner who does it or an experienced consultant who can hold you by hand, my advice for you is to start from small, when you start small small, it will help you gradually and you can easily start another large one.
8. Understand How To Feed The Pigs
You have to understand the procedure on how to feed the pigs approximately on farm, some people suggest feeding pigs twice in a day and it is a good standard, young pigs need a diet high in amino acids so that they can grow more muscle tissue and there should be more lysine in feed for younger pigs and after some months, young pigs could be put into adult food that will have lower level of protein. Too much lysine in the diet can be detrimental to growth in heavier female pigs. Apart from concentrates which is the feed you buy, you can offer your pigs other foodstuffs like grass, fruits, vegetables and other human food they can eat. Be sure they can the certain food you want to give them before you will be giving them so as not hinder their growth especially when they are very young.
9. Understand How You Can Cure Their Diseases And The Solutions
You have to understand how to cure pigs diseases and the solution very well, animals get sick just as human do, the different is that you may not know when the pigs in your farm are getting sick except you pay attention. Since every sickness start from symptoms, you must have an experienced person near you such as a veterinary doctor you he/she will understand the pigs symptoms and you will be able to contact he/she when its get to sickness and you notice one or two things from your pigs. Apart from sickness you will also need the service of the veterinary doctor to give appropriate vaccine whenever necessary. So you have to understand how you can cure their diseases and if you van not inject, let the veterinary doctor be at your side, call he/she when you notice something from your pigs.
10. Get Perfect Place For The Business
Use perfect place for the business, you can make use of your backyard when you have space, you can also get half or a plot of land for the business, don't use a clay land area and if you want to use it build your pen very well. Get a place suitable for the pigs and always make sure that the place is very neat, you can also get a cleaner that will be cleaning up the pen for you every day or you can do it yourself. So you have to get a perfect place for the business.
Let's talk about the equipments used in pig farming business
Here are the equipments used in this business
When it comes to equipment, you don't have to worry yourself about some equipment in the piggery business, after you have built up your pig pen, get water and feeding trucks ready, you may need few other things like bows to serve pig feed and a fridge to keep your vaccine, you can even get a cool place to store your vaccine. The only equipment you need most is to build you pig pen very comfortably, you can even create where to feed and drink inside the pen.
So, with all these steps and guides, I hope you can able to start your pig farming business successfully in Nigeria which will brings you more profit at last..
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