During WW2 in Great Britain there was a rush to cull farm animals due to the vast majority of grain being shipped to the front lines for soldiers fighting the Nazi’s. If you had grain, you absolutely had to no choice but to give it up to the government and from there they would decide how it would get dispersed.
A dark reality is that the government threatened farmers with the loss of their farms, so they got to have a huge say so over your property and even employed individuals to go around to farms and check to see who wasn’t giving their “fair share” to the government. An easy way they controlled many individuals was by guilting them into doing their part to defeat the Nazi’s.
Rationing was of course a big program instituted by the government and as the war raged on, the portions got smaller and smaller. A typical weekly ration for one adult was 4oz of bacon & ham, 12oz of sugar, 2oz of tea, 1oz of cheese, 2oz jelly, 2oz of animal fat, and 4oz of butter. They got away with this by using a rationing book which everyone was required to carry and use during the week.
The government set up an organization known as “The Small Pig Keeping Council” to organize and oversee all of the different pig buying clubs which were working at the time. The plan was you would essentially put your kitchen scraps into a bucket and those involved with your pig club would gather it as well. Once all of the members gathered, all scraps would be thrown into a large pot and boiled down for the pig to eat once it had cooled. This is where the term pig slop or pig swill comes from, it’s a disgusting looking mixture of whatever they had available.
The Council insisted that if these clubs were to function, part of the club’s cooperation would see the government getting half of the pig while the members of the pig club would have to share the remainder. An officer was actually dispatched at the time of the slaughter to ensure they government wasn’t shorted their promised portion.
After a huge outbreak of foot and mouth disease, the program saw a steep decline in clubs, and it was decided that no more pig swill would be fed to the pigs from the kitchen waste, but they could be fed on garden waste. Foot and mouth disease was found to thrive in areas where animals were not kept in sanitary conditions and because many animals were kept in close quarters, it could spread and take out whole herds.
What does any of this have to do with homesteading now? Simply put, we are experiencing grain shortages due to numerous factors and if we don’t find food alternatives for our livestock, they will either be culled or die of starvation.
So, you can contact neighbors in your areas that you have a good rapport with and see if anyone would like to do a pig share and give you their vegetable scraps from their gardens or fruit and vegetables pieces from the kitchen that would otherwise go in the compost. There are some other possibilities outside of your typical grain feed mixes in a pinch that you can use to get their nutrients from such as fermented corn, cooked sweet potatoes, alfalfa, cooked barley, cabbage, black eyed peas and oats. There are numerous lists of acceptable options for pig feed in addition to whatever daily kitchen produce scraps you have that you can search out online.
My advice is to start finding alternatives now before times get harder. If you need any assistance planning out your homestead, find me on facebook and let’s get a consultation scheduled. Happy homesteading!
Suburban & Rural Homesteading Today 