Pigs, are they worth it?

Illinois Farmer
Posts: 4923
Joined: Tue Jul 16, 2019 7:34 pm

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by Illinois Farmer »

Liberator wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 3:00 pm Pigs are worthless in seasons that for sure all the food they eat vs the sell off ,,numbers just don't add up better off selling the crops

any of these youtubers who say different have no real clue or never really tested them

take a look at this guy charts pretty spot on
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... =478617488

holstein milk cows for the win

then again its just a game and you enjoy doing them good luck to you
That spreadsheet is terrible, sorry if you created it, but it is bad. For one, your starting weight on feeder pigs are off, second you would sell them by 285 to make the best price, not all the way to 600 plus. Also your guilts, starting with seems way too high and don't want them getting to 700 plus. That's just wasting food, money, and not good on the health of the pigs.
1300 acre farm, finish out just about 10,000 hogs a year, 200 cattle, and xbox one and pc user.
Mwal
Posts: 3270
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2017 4:59 pm

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by Mwal »

DEERE317 wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 4:41 pm
Oh and your Google Sheet is meaningless as it’s for Chickens.
You have to select pigs
User avatar
DEERE317
Posts: 3189
Joined: Fri Dec 25, 2020 5:01 pm

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by DEERE317 »

Illinois Farmer wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:41 pm
Liberator wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 3:00 pm Pigs are worthless in seasons that for sure all the food they eat vs the sell off ,,numbers just don't add up better off selling the crops

any of these youtubers who say different have no real clue or never really tested them

take a look at this guy charts pretty spot on
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... =478617488

holstein milk cows for the win

then again its just a game and you enjoy doing them good luck to you
That spreadsheet is terrible, sorry if you created it, but it is bad. For one, your starting weight on feeder pigs are off, second you would sell them by 285 to make the best price, not all the way to 600 plus. Also your guilts, starting with seems way too high and don't want them getting to 700 plus. That's just wasting food, money, and not good on the health of the pigs.
600lbs feeder hogs?!? That’s an animal welfare charity not a business/farm!
That’s what 2-4 years of terrible feed conversion? Our 4 or 5 year old Duroc sow is maybe that when pregnant.
FS15 & FS19 Platinum Edition PC (and War Thunder, Gaijin is way worse than GIANTS ever has been accused of being)
FS Comunity Trader: https://fs19communitytrader.freeforums.net/
Desktop: i5-9400f, RTX 2060, 8gb RAM, 256gb SSD.
Laptop: Pentium Silver N5000, UHD605, 4gb RAM, 1tb HDD.
Deere, Fendt, Claas, and sometimes the rest of Agco.
Liberator
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:39 pm

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by Liberator »

Illinois Farmer wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:41 pm
Liberator wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 3:00 pm Pigs are worthless in seasons that for sure all the food they eat vs the sell off ,,numbers just don't add up better off selling the crops

any of these youtubers who say different have no real clue or never really tested them

take a look at this guy charts pretty spot on
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... =478617488

holstein milk cows for the win

then again its just a game and you enjoy doing them good luck to you
That spreadsheet is terrible, sorry if you created it, but it is bad. For one, your starting weight on feeder pigs are off, second you would sell them by 285 to make the best price, not all the way to 600 plus. Also your guilts, starting with seems way too high and don't want them getting to 700 plus. That's just wasting food, money, and not good on the health of the pigs.
No was not my list but iv have tested them


say you buy 40 berkshire pigs and the best time i had to sell them at 2.6-2.8 years i made 41k - 12k buying them ) = 29k profit now take into account all the food over 70,000 L

sell the crops would have made more money
User avatar
DEERE317
Posts: 3189
Joined: Fri Dec 25, 2020 5:01 pm

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by DEERE317 »

Mwal wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:45 pm
DEERE317 wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 4:41 pm
Oh and your Google Sheet is meaningless as it’s for Chickens.
You have to select pigs
Just did, the first row is roughly the sell weight (about 5-10lbs low) so most of it is meaningless.
(Looking at Berkshire as that’s my ingame breed of choice)
FS15 & FS19 Platinum Edition PC (and War Thunder, Gaijin is way worse than GIANTS ever has been accused of being)
FS Comunity Trader: https://fs19communitytrader.freeforums.net/
Desktop: i5-9400f, RTX 2060, 8gb RAM, 256gb SSD.
Laptop: Pentium Silver N5000, UHD605, 4gb RAM, 1tb HDD.
Deere, Fendt, Claas, and sometimes the rest of Agco.
User avatar
DEERE317
Posts: 3189
Joined: Fri Dec 25, 2020 5:01 pm

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by DEERE317 »

Liberator wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:00 pm
Illinois Farmer wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:41 pm
Liberator wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 3:00 pm Pigs are worthless in seasons that for sure all the food they eat vs the sell off ,,numbers just don't add up better off selling the crops

any of these youtubers who say different have no real clue or never really tested them

take a look at this guy charts pretty spot on
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... =478617488

holstein milk cows for the win

then again its just a game and you enjoy doing them good luck to you
That spreadsheet is terrible, sorry if you created it, but it is bad. For one, your starting weight on feeder pigs are off, second you would sell them by 285 to make the best price, not all the way to 600 plus. Also your guilts, starting with seems way too high and don't want them getting to 700 plus. That's just wasting food, money, and not good on the health of the pigs.
No was not my list but iv have tested them


say you buy 40 berkshire pigs and the best time i had to sell them at 2.6-2.8 years i made 41k - 12k buying them ) = 29k profit now take into account all the food over 70,000 L

sell the crops would have made more money
Try 1/2 of a year, nearly 3 years is more time than a beef cow takes to reach weight.
Feed use will go down, and feed conversion will improve.
FS15 & FS19 Platinum Edition PC (and War Thunder, Gaijin is way worse than GIANTS ever has been accused of being)
FS Comunity Trader: https://fs19communitytrader.freeforums.net/
Desktop: i5-9400f, RTX 2060, 8gb RAM, 256gb SSD.
Laptop: Pentium Silver N5000, UHD605, 4gb RAM, 1tb HDD.
Deere, Fendt, Claas, and sometimes the rest of Agco.
Illinois Farmer
Posts: 4923
Joined: Tue Jul 16, 2019 7:34 pm

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by Illinois Farmer »

Liberator wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:00 pm
No was not my list but iv have tested them


say you buy 40 berkshire pigs and the best time i had to sell them at 2.6-2.8 years i made 41k - 12k buying them ) = 29k profit now take into account all the food over 70,000 L

sell the crops would have made more money
Why would you keep it that long? No wonder you don't like pigs when your weights are off. Buy the pig at 55 lbs and sell at 285. I like how you call out youtubers, but you are just doing it wrong ha.
1300 acre farm, finish out just about 10,000 hogs a year, 200 cattle, and xbox one and pc user.
User avatar
DEERE317
Posts: 3189
Joined: Fri Dec 25, 2020 5:01 pm

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by DEERE317 »

Illinois Farmer wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:08 pm
Liberator wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:00 pm
No was not my list but iv have tested them


say you buy 40 berkshire pigs and the best time i had to sell them at 2.6-2.8 years i made 41k - 12k buying them ) = 29k profit now take into account all the food over 70,000 L

sell the crops would have made more money
Why would you keep it that long? No wonder you don't like pigs when your weights are off. Buy the pig at 55 lbs and sell at 285. I like how you call out youtubers, but you are just doing it wrong ha.
To be fair most YouTubers don’t know either, I remember when Klutch was doing Georgetown he had pigs around those weights and was thinking of how much money he was throwing away...
FS15 & FS19 Platinum Edition PC (and War Thunder, Gaijin is way worse than GIANTS ever has been accused of being)
FS Comunity Trader: https://fs19communitytrader.freeforums.net/
Desktop: i5-9400f, RTX 2060, 8gb RAM, 256gb SSD.
Laptop: Pentium Silver N5000, UHD605, 4gb RAM, 1tb HDD.
Deere, Fendt, Claas, and sometimes the rest of Agco.
Illinois Farmer
Posts: 4923
Joined: Tue Jul 16, 2019 7:34 pm

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by Illinois Farmer »

I was thinking more of Mr. Sealyp.
1300 acre farm, finish out just about 10,000 hogs a year, 200 cattle, and xbox one and pc user.
Bryan83
Posts: 1489
Joined: Sat Jan 04, 2020 3:10 am
Location: Western Washington, USA

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by Bryan83 »

Illinois Farmer wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:08 pm
Liberator wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:00 pm

No was not my list but iv have tested them


say you buy 40 berkshire pigs and the best time i had to sell them at 2.6-2.8 years i made 41k - 12k buying them ) = 29k profit now take into account all the food over 70,000 L

sell the crops would have made more money


Why would you keep it that long? No wonder you don't like pigs when your weights are off. Buy the pig at 55 lbs and sell at 285. I like how you call out youtubers, but you are just doing it wrong ha.
So by doing it this way, do you know what your financials are per pig? Or if the math is easier, how would that work out to 100 head? What breed do you buy?
Join us on the FS Community Trader. As featured on MrSealyP's Lukahs Island let's play.

Please forgive me, I am but a lowly console player (XB1)
User avatar
Dairydeere
Posts: 2736
Joined: Sun Mar 03, 2019 6:11 pm
Location: Washington, United States
Contact:

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by Dairydeere »

On the topic of YouTubers, Kederk Farms made a decent profit with Berkshires on Flint Hills, bought them little and sold around 285lbs. He did have a load of corn though lol
Dairy farmer, college student, part-time modder, always looking to drive a tractor

Discord Server
Facebook page

Where should you download mods from? Try this! - A Guide to Respectful Downloads and Original Mods

Driving up a wall because my brain turned off the gravity

Happy farming!
Bobbydj1980
Posts: 397
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2018 3:01 am
Location: Orangebeach Al

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by Bobbydj1980 »

I just started pigs on my griffin indiana map so I'll let you know I usually do beef cattle but desided to do pigs on this one to
Love farming simulator I play on the Xbox series x orangebeach Alabama
Crazof
Posts: 796
Joined: Tue Feb 06, 2018 6:54 pm

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by Crazof »

I'm running a hog operation on Oberkrebach. New farmer, normal economy. I started with 10 pigs on day 1, started on 3 day seasons but after loosing my entire corn crop at the end of year 3 I switched to 6 day seasons.
I grow crops for the sole purpose of feeding the pigs.

As of day 85 I have sold pigs 56 different days so far, total pig sales of $1,602,977. Averaging $18,858.55 per day.

I used the maps starting pig building(300 max) at first, then sold the cattle barn to add another pig building for 600 max capacity, after a little bit I figured out I could place lone oak pig building in the original pig building location so I did allowing me 800 max. This past winter I sold the second 300 capacity building and was able to put two lone oak buildings in upper section of the farm.so I currently have capacity for 1500 pigs. I put 50 about to be breeding sized pigs in each new building

Production was hurt a few times:
A. When the corn crop failed I sold pigs to avoid buying pig food
B. When putting in the first lone oak building I sold off a bunch of pigs .
C. Adding the two lone oak buildings at the same time I sold off a bunch because I couldn't hold them while the old building came down and the new ones went up.

I try to keep about 10% of the pens capacity as sows. I typically sell pigs around 218 lbs, higher than that and they start to become pregnant. When I decide to replace the old sows I scan the animal list and only sell ones that are not pregnant.

Overall pigs have been fun, although I'm constantly watching the pens. The original lone oak building had around 80 new pigs overnight the other day, so I sold 100, the the next night it had around 95, plus one of the new buildings had around 60. The #1 thing I try to avoid is hitting max capacity, then no new pigs are born.

Half of the crops are corn, 1/4 canola, 1/4 wheat or barley.
Pigs get straw starting on the last day of fall, my final top of straw is the first day of spring.
All slurry and manure go to the bga.
I like doing some contracts, so my expansion is slow, I only own about 1/2 the map
The geo I use allows me to double crop grass and corn so I do alot of grass silage for the bga.
Ive also done a bunch of logging to fill time, cut around 120 trees, planted 150 so far
Did just buy a field to try some potatoes with the new dlc stuff
bossmanslim
Posts: 698
Joined: Thu Jan 10, 2019 7:13 pm

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by bossmanslim »

I didn't read the whole thread. In general, if you are playing seasons, livestock is worth the effort, paying back fairly quickly. If you are not playing seasons, livestock takes longer to pay for the investment than most players will play the game.

From my analysis of pigs way back when:

Methodology:
All food will be treated as costing the target sell price. Manure and slurry are treated as being sold at the sell point because the BGA is an insane price. They could be used as fertilizer, but I don't want to get into the math for that.
Equipment cost other than specific pig farming only items will be ignored because that cost would be incurred to sell the crop (grain production, trailers, tractors, baling equipment, etc.)

This was done with a short (1.45 hour) and long (14.85 hour)data sets and then averaged. The data isn't quite linear and I assume that has something to do with the time acceleration while "sleeping".

Large pig pen used in order to get reproduction rates up

One time costs = $569740:
Large pig pen - $250000
Slurry tank - $72000
Loader, bale spike & bucket - $8240 (averaged between small and large tractor loader)
Water trailer - $9500
Leased livestock trailer - $5000
150 pigs - $225000

Hourly costs = $588.74:
Corn - $272.25
Wheat - $117.48
Canola - $170.29
Sugar Beets - $8.48
Straw - $20.25

Hourly revenue = $1519.20
Pigs - $1400 (1.4 pigs per hour @ $1000)
Manure - $55.02
Slurry - $64.18
Profit per hour = $930.46

Hours to break even = 613 in game hours

If the player skips nights (sleeps for half the day), then it drops to 306.5 hours. Assuming the player is working 8 of the 12 remaining hours on farm stuff, the player is looking at 200 hours of game play before they can start breaking even on their initial investment. Daily profit after that is only $22331, which is basically nothing compared to other crops. A player could invest that $570K into 13 acres and come out with about $73000 in canola everyday on fast crops, $36530 on normal crops.
User avatar
blue_painted
Posts: 1670
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2018 3:50 pm
Location: UK

Re: Pigs, are they worth it?

Post by blue_painted »

Adamvet wrote: Sat Apr 03, 2021 1:40 pm So what is your yearly net income for this 1000 pigs?
To be honest, I've never bothered to calculate net profit on any of my farms -- I gave up being an account 20+ years ago -- but from a playing perspective, they make enough money to keep adding to the bank balance, which I then spend on new kit because it's there.
Playing new "Beest" Intel i7-11700F with GeForce GTX 3060 and XBOX controller
also £600 laptop - AMD Ryzen 5600H with GeForce GTX 3050 XBOX controller

Dairydeere's A Guide to Finding Farming Simulator Mods - Please give this a read and help spread awareness for respectful mod downloads
Post Reply