PIGGERY FARMING
Pigs have a number of advantages that suit the small scale farmers. The pig has highest feed conversion efficiency as they produce more live weight gain from a given weight of feed than any other class of meat producing animals except broilers. Uganda’s estimated population of pigs is about 3.2 million.
Advantages of pig farming
- The pig can utilize wide variety of feed stuffs like Grains, forages; damaged feeds and garbage convert them into valuable nutritious meat. Feeding of damaged grains, garbage and other home wastes reduce the stress of buying food stuffs hence spending less or no money on food.
- They are prolific with shorter generation interval. A sow can be bred as early as 8-9 months of age and can farrow twice in a year producing 6-12 piglets in each farrowing.
- Pig farming requires small investment on buildings and equipments.
- Pork is most nutritious with high fat and low water content and has got better energy value than that of other meats. It is rich in vitamins like thiamine, Niacin and riboflavin. So this practice also fights Malnutrition.
- Pig manure is widely used as fertilizer for agriculture farms and fishponds.
- Pigs store fat rapidly for which there is an increasing demand from poultry feed, soap, paints and other chemical industries.
- Pig farming provides quick returns since the marketable weight of fatteners can be achieved with in a period of 6-8 months.
- There is good demand from domestic as well as export market for pig products such as pork, bacon, ham, sausages, lard etc.
Market opportunities
Uganda’s has high pig consumption of 3.4 kg per capita is a key driver to the rapid increase in the production of pigs. The demand is also driven up by a combination of population growth and rising incomes of people in urban areas. The demand is also coming from supermarkets which have made the products readily available to the customers. Some addition demand is also being created by the emergence of formal-sector enterprises like Fresh Cuts and Quality Cuts which offer quality pork products.
Breeds types of pigs
There is a rich variety of both indigenous and exotic breeds including the following:
- Duroc
- Largewhite
- Landlance.
Feeding pigs
Pigs can be fed on a combination of the following:
- The leaves of a variety of crops including Sweet Potatoes Vines, Cassava, Yams and Banana peelings.
- They can also feed on a variety of cooked food stuffs, including leftovers in public eating places.
- Commercially or homemade animal feed
Challenges of pig farming
The challenges in pig farming include the following:
- Getting the required cooling systems is a major challenge.
- There is no hydro electric power on most rural farms
- There are no skilled workers to run the piggery in order to produce quality pig products.
- Transporting live pigs to the market is quite expensive and farmers end up selling to the middlemen at a lower price
- Lack of knowledge about the market
Pig production and marketing concerns
The following are the concerns to deal with:
- Control strategies for ASF and Classical Swine Fever (CSF), worm infestations.
- Public health concerns regarding coccidiosis
- Poor feeding practices and lack of adequate supplies of appropriate feeds, either on-farm or Purchase.
- Lack of knowledge for better use of by-products like brewer’s yeast.
- Limited genetic resource base and inbreeding.
- Poor bio security, with breeding practices contributing to disease transmission.
- Lack of awareness and incentive to adopt improved management, especially housing
- Lack of sustainable organizational structures for breeder and producer groups in order to facilitate their access to affordable breeding animals, animal health care and efficient market Services.
- Poor or non-existent waste management systems
- Lack of business and management decision support tools, e.g. when it is better to specialize in breeding, weaner or fattening operations; optimal feeding strategies for profits, business plans for infrastructure investment
- Poor market infrastructure
- Weak input supply system and limited support services.