Trim pork as fast food.

Many lifestyle farmers like to have a pig or two to produce pork or bacon for their own plate, and at this time of year Miss Piggy is likely to wind up on the festive table as Christmas ham.

Properly housed and fed, pigs can be grown relatively quickly and cheaply, but there’s an art to getting it right.

Lindsay and Kevin Finan reared pigs for many years on their Bombay property. The pigs provided a substantial part of their meat requirements and were a welcome barter item among friends.

Bought in as weaners, the Finan pigs almost qualified as ‘fast food’, growing to 40-50kg porkers in just three months.

“Caring for them was pretty simple,” says Lindsay.

“We made sure to keep the weaners warm and clean, so they stayed healthy. They weren’t around long enough to need worming.”

Feeding was easy – and so was allowing the pigs to gain too much weight. “Pigs are like people; feed them too much of the wrong food, and they get fat,” cautions Lindsay.

“We learned to produce ‘trim pork’ by feeding them greens for their last couple of weeks.”

A reliable source of food was imperative. One particularly delicious batch of pigs was fed on yoghurt, but pumpkins proved a winner as well.

However, Lindsay was always wary of the pigs during her daily task of cleaning out the sties.

“Pigs are omnivorous,” she says. “I always kept a eye on them when they started nibbling on my gumboots.”  

Keeping the pigs contained was essential, as once outside the sty they demonstrated their fairground reputation as slippery customers. And they’re smart.

One of the Finan’s boars found he could escape by running at the sty wall, hooking his elbows over the top and scrabbling himself over.

Evidently unimpressed with his porcine companions, he would run down to the sheep paddock.

“Then he’d go and molest the ewes,” says Lindsay. “They weren’t happy about that!”

Asked whether their home-grown pork tasted better than store bought, Lindsay ponders.