Weighting Feed

Need to know if we need to weight son's pellet feed before or after we add the water to wet the pellets for his two pigs.

What are your thoughts?

Allways weigh the feed prior to adding water.

Thanks

What does adding water do for the pig

Wow 115 views and no knows what adding water to feed does for the pig you would think with that many views somebody would know I guess not.

Im just curious why you would consider weighing the feed? Is this a show day inquiry

West Texas.. if this is a show day event, the reason for adding water would simply be the obvious.... adding water. You weigh the feed prior because it is hard to make an accurate judgment on the amount an animal would gain. For the most part if you add the weight of the feed and figure that approximately 8 pounds would be gained with 1 gallon of water, then the rest could be calculated.

good luck everyone

I don't know what the post was started for I was just curios the reason for adding water. I know show day but I thought maybe there is some sort of advantage to it way befor the show day.

The pigs have what is considered a simple digestive system. Simply put there intestines are not as complex or long as ours. This means that is doesn't allow them to completely break down food as well as we can to allow proper obsorbtion of all the essential vitamins and minerals. This is why you look for food that is highly palatable meaning that it is designed to break and easily chewed. You do not need to add water most people don't anymore. Some people do it just simply because someone told them to but feed has come around advansing so much that I remember when my grandfather and uncle had showpigs for my older cousins we had to add water.

Adding water does help but is not exactly necessary if you are using show feed that says Highly Palatable.

Ok thanks

Well for our son's 4H book, he's making a chart that shows weight gain over the feed amount. We changed their food from the Kentwood FFA Blue Tag which had vanilla for flavoring to the Circle T Hog feed that is pellet and they would not eat the entire pan until we wet it. I did not want to short change his pig if we are hand feeding a certain amount and if you weight the food with water...we would be short changing them on the feed.

We are not holding. Ruby his show pig weighted in at 200 pounds which we were over the limit by 25 pounds and Garnet was 150. She was short 25 pounds...LOL...

We showed against a gilt that came from the LSU Swine Unit.

Ruby got 2nd, Garnet got best in show and 1st in the Pee-Wee Class. Hubby said that the judge said that Ruby was to red and the white pig did not have enough color, so he went with Garnet who is our deep freeze pig and I'm having a hard time with our son who now wants to eat Ruby and KEEP Garnet. I got attatched to Ruby and want to breed her to a Duroc and get a bigger butt on the babies.