How to Feed Sunflowers to Swine

Sunflowers provide swine with both greens and seeds to eat.

Swine are wonderfully useful creatures. In addition to providing humans with meat, including bacon and ham, they can be rototillers as well. Place a hog or two in a field and they will till it and fertilize it for you. They are simple to keep because they will eat almost anything. Hogs will not only eat sunflower seeds, but also the flower head, stem and roots if given the chance.

Things You'll Need

• Knife or clipper
• Sunflowers

Instructions

1. Harvest your sunflowers during the peak of their blooming period. Use a knife or a clipper to cut the heads off the sunflower stems.

2. Shake the flower heads into a bucket to release the seeds, using your hands to scrape out as many of the seeds as possible.

3. Add the seeds to the swine's normal daily food ration in moderate amounts. How much you feed your swine depends on how many seeds you have. A handful in the feed bucket is not an unreasonable amount.

4. Cut down or pull out the entire sunflower and feed it to your swine whole, including the stem.

5. Let your swine loose in your sunflower patch, surrounded by a temporary fence, if you want them to eat the seed heads and clear the land of the stems. A swine will eat almost anything and will consume the whole of a sunflower plant if given the opportunity.

Tips & Warnings

• Any fence for swine, whether temporary or permanent, must be very strong. While most swine will not leave an area that is full of food for them, they are very strong and adept at escaping. An electric fence is ideal, as long as you "introduce" the swine to it first.

References

• Permaculture Produce: How to Keep and Kill Pigs
• Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association; Raising Organic Pigs; Diane Schivera
• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: A Manual for Primary Animal Health Care Workers, Chapter 4: The Pig