Skin Question

Our son's two red wattle crosses are 8 wks old now. Ruby is redder (she also a good 5 lbs more then her sister) then Garnet (who is a copper color). Ruby will be the his show pig for our up coming Parish Fair (in October) and Garnet the companion.

Sunday we started to brush them. Garnet shies away from everything and Ruby...how do I put this...she a HOG (feed, brushing you name it).

Are they too young to put something on their skin to help with the dandrif (sp?)/flacky skin?

If it's okay to put something on their skin, what can I use? We live in Washington Parish, LA. Our heat index has been over 105 degrees this past week. They've been sleeping outside their shelter close to the old wallow.

Thanks

I my memory serves you are feeding these pigs a 14% protein diet that your coop floor stocks? If that is right then I'd bet the skin issue to be mostly about diet. You need to add some fat and probably some zinc.

If you want to put something on them plain old cheap unscented body lotion works as good as anything.

Just whatever you do don't steal Mother's nice lotion. Cause if Mama ain't happy there ain't nobody happy.

What kind of fat can I add? What about this zinc stuff, too?

Here I thought this feed was suppose to be the "right" stuff for starting out young pigs.

Live and Learn

The best thing would still be if you could find a way to get a starter / grower feed for these guys instead of the 14%.

Just to put it in perspective my kids show pigs stay on an 18% diet all the way to finish.

You could look at the websites for Honor Show Chow, Moorman's show tec, Showmaster feeds, there are others and see if any of them have any dealers close by. I also know some of them ship supplements via UPS.

Will do and thanks.