Pigs Eat Grasses!

I have written extensively in one of my posts about how pig farming business is very lucrative in Nigeria. But little is known to farmers about the ability of pigs to eat grass. Indeed, pigs are monogastric animals rather than ruminants, but they thrive well on grasses as they don’t digest grass the way that cows do. There are many species that eat grass and even harder to digest cellulose (e.g., beavers). Some animals have four stomaches compartments, some have two, some have one – There are many strategies. The fact is the pigs get a lot of food value out of grass.

Additionally, pasture is not all grass – there are clovers, alfalfa, shrubs, young trees and a lot of other forages. Cows, sheep and goats also enjoy the above forages. Pigs thrive on pasture as the majority of their diet and they can even do very well on just pasture/hay. They simply grow a little bit slower and are leaner than grain fed pigs. Pasture is lower in calories and lysine – a limiting amino-acid.

It is impertive to know that all pastures are not grasses. It is possible to plant a monocrop of just grass, a lawn like pasture, but natural pastures are a wide variety of plant species. Most of the time we also feed dairy which provides lysine and added calories. Dairy also makes the pork taste sweeter. We grow and feed pumpkins, other veggies and apples. But these things are a small part of our pig’s total diet. The fact remains, pigs do eat pasture, hay and grass with high digestibility and they can thrive on it. Cassava, pawpaw, pineaple, banana leaves and pawpaw leaves are also part of pigs diets.