Pigs - Are they worth having?

[ArizonaSnow]

Has anyone worked out how much profit you make from pigs? ie working out how much they eat and balancing it against how much they would get for the crops vs how much the produced pigs sell for?

The reason I ask is because it seems to me that you could possibly be loosing money on the easy difficulty since the sale price for pigs is so low.

And does anyone know why the pigs sell for the same price on easy as they do on hard, cos this makes the profit for pigs more on hard than on easy which sounds a little silly to me tbh.

[ErwinR55]

I haven't made a profit on them yet. I have 5500 pigses now, and I just keep feeding them and feeding them and feeding them.
You never have enough pigses if you can keep feeding them .

With cows you get your days milk pricings as a reward


But I did a small bit of calculation, and I think 1000 pigs will eat away (average prices on normal) around 70.000. Add a bit of costs for needing water and -30.000 maintenance so that would turn up around 1.000.000 worth of savings if you don't have pigs. But you do gain manure and slurry so don't have buy fertilizer that much.

1000 pigses will sell for about 1.000.000 aswell (1.2 if you bring them yourself......) So all in all I don't think it really matters, but not having pigses would be more profitable.

[JTaylor801]

In FS17, sheep are your key to profit followed by cows. But while the pigs earn very little profit, they do produce manure and liquid manure. So if you are using these to fertilize then they are probably worth having on your farm.

[Paeppchen]

To make a profit of the pig sell you must them

[Beastofwar]

In FS17, sheep are your key to profit followed by cows. But while the pigs earn very little profit, they do produce manure and liquid manure. So if you are using these to fertilize then they are probably worth having on your farm.

Don't forget the greenhouses....they are fed by manure and water and are very profitable. But you first need manure, not nessesarely from cows.

[ErwinR55]

Since pigs produce manure and liquid manure, you can use a mod called Manure Separator in order to get pure straw.

Now, why would you make straw to feed straw to make manure to make straw out of it again?
What else are you gonna getting besides straw that is actually usefull to do this?

I know in cow barns they use manureseparators for liquid manure to create bedding materials, but never seen a straw separator.

[erict43]

I think the value in the separator is getting slurry from the manure. Straw is a by-product. In this way you can increase the amount of slurry you get from your animals.

[JohnDeere318]

I have to agree with JTaylor, sheep are really good money makers, which is what I went with when I sold the pigs. The sheep mostly cover my seeding and fertilizing costs for the seeders.

I have at least 200 cows right now and they have been giving me around 64k each night, which is really good income from the cows! I will probably never have pigs again, just not worth my time, effort, and money.

[TopSoil]

I did some detailed analysis on this some months ago. The raw data showed that cows are the most profitable animal - however it did not take into account great demands on wool (and there isn't one for milk), so it's very possible that sheep are just as good if you wait for GDs and get good prices. Feeding is different - some people like only having to give em grass, some people really enjoy the added complexity of feeding cows.

Pigs were not very profitable until you let the herd grow large -- the whole concept is that the main return from them (aside from manure) is having pigs to sell - their birth rate is like 17% per day which is huge - but the pricing is such that the sell price is so much lower than the buy price, so each pig needs quite a few days to reproduce enough times to generate that excellent profit. Profits from sheep and cows are mostly linear - profits from pigs are logarithmic ... but it's painful to spend all night hauling pigs to market one small load at a time.

[oneway]

I started with sheep and they are a great source of revenue especially when the price of wool goes above $10,000. 2 trailer loads and you can net around $600,000. I may have to stop doing pigs. It seems I don't have any more time to farm. I am just feeding pigs and I don't have that many-250 or so?

[thumbwiz]

I keep 60 pigs to maintain a manure pile that supports 3 greenhouses in the same area. Feeding requirements for this many is not overwhelming. I sell the offspring when there is a trailer load. For me they have been profitable once the greenhouses and trailer were covered. Keep in mind that you need to sell a lot in order to cover the price of purchasing the trailer. 200 bucks a pig selling direct is not a bad choice, but I like to deliver them myself.

[GrimGandalf]

I started with sheep and they are a great source of revenue especially when the price of wool goes above $10,000. 2 trailer loads and you can net around $600,000. I may have to stop doing pigs. It seems I don't havey any more time to farm. I am just feeding pigs and I don't have that many-250 or so?

If 250 is too many sell off 100 then work back to 250. Then rinse and repeat.

[Guil]

I really wish there was a way to sell a large amount of animals without hammering the button repeatedly, say 10, 25 and 50.

[Kim1978]

pigs are broken and there eat the wrong food

[oneway]

I sold all my pigs. They quickly got up to around 700. I had everything going ok except for the straw shooter. That was what was taking too much time.