Page 8 - Australian Pork Newspaper

Feather and Bone the home of pasture-raised pork
Cant Comment by BRENDON CANT
more particularly, what the happy little porkers eat before Feather and
IF it wasn’t for the hard border and quarantining here in our island state within an island, as WA was labelled early in the COVID-19 pandemic, I’d fly to Sydney every week just to shop at Feather and Bone Butchery in Marrickville, NSW.
Bone customers eat them. So, here’s a taste.
This edited extract from
with all sorts of prod- ucts including seasonal grains, fruits, vegeta- bles, excess dairy whey and milk, spent brewers’ grains, excess bakery sourdough and the var- ious grasses, plants, dirt and insects that they dig up in the paddocks.
genetically modified or- ganism free and there is no meat meal or blood meal.
Well okay, pigs might fly you may well say and I fess up that I could not afford the flights or the time, but I can afford to dream.
Like chickens and hu- mans, pigs are omnivores, so they need to be offered a diverse mix of proteins, minerals and nutrients to ensure they grow and thrive.
While all the farms we work with are con- nected by a common, re- generative management approach that prioritises ecosystem health and bal- ance, each farm is unique.
There are also other in- gredients including salt, lime, a nutrient premix and amino acids – they are derived from plants and ensure good muscle development.
the latest communique says it all and it’s all about taste.
Currently, the diet in- cludes these key elements: wheat 50 percent, barley 12 percent, soybean meal 12 percent and canola meal 8 percent.
All the farms we source from run their pigs out- side for their entire lives.
Alex from Extraordinary Pork in Eumungerie NSW calmly walking the pigs to their on-farm processing facility.
Feather and Bone under- stand my pasture-raised pork fetish and whet my appetite with their news- letter, which most recently was about the provenance of the pork they sell and,
Throughout their lives, whether they stay on the farm as breeders or end up on your plate, these pasture-raised pigs have a varied diet anchored around a customised pig feed ration augmented
Common to all is the reliance on wheat and barley as the major in- gredient in all their for- mulated diet rations and the notable lack of any pharmaceutical inputs.
We don’t supplement them with any food scraps, but they certainly make good use of grass, bugs and grubs out in the paddock.
What sets a couple apart is the use of meat and/or blood meal, with varying quantities of other inputs.”
Near River - Hollisdale, NSW
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Here are the farmers’ responses in alphabetical farm order:
In addition to the grasses and bugs foraged in the paddocks, the sows, weaners and grower pigs are fed a primary wheat feed, a barley mix and additional locally-sourced excess farm waste.
Bundarra Berkshires - Barham, NSW
Our pig diet consists of a pellet of non-genetically modified matter, which is comprised of barley, wheat, peas, lupins and a mineral mix of beet- root extracts, probiotics, oregano, cinnamon, apple cider vinegar and vege- table oil.
The pigs are offered dif- fering ratios depending on when they require higher protein rates.
The pigs graze on salt- bush, native grasses and pasture, though at this time of the year (high summer), it’s dry grass and pellets only.
We are very pleased to be able to source wheat from NSW again after shipping it from Western Australia for the past year or so.
Whenever it’s available, we add waste excess pro- duce from local farmers – right now, it’s avocado waste and orange peel, which they go berserk for.
We do our best to source chemical-free wheat.
No corn, though soymeal.
Primarily we feed our pigs wheat that we mill on farm.
We mix this with a pro- prietary concentrate from Riverina Stockfeeds.
We chose a vegetarian diet because while the pigs grow slower without using meat meals, we be- lieve it is better for their gut heath and overall meat texture, sweetness and a clean earthy finish.
The base raw materials may change seasonally but the typical composi- tion includes soybean meal, cottonseed meal, canola meal, pulses, meat and blood meal, amino acids, salt, dicalcium phosphate, mould inhib- itor, Riverina vitamin and mineral premix.
Extraordinary Pork - Eumungerie, NSW
In the past six weeks we have also added a biscuit meal to these mixes, to increase the energy com- ponent.
Page 8 – Australian Pork Newspaper, February 2021
* continued P9
Pasture-raised pork belly and potatoes. Simple, suc-
culent and tasty.
We feed our pigs a custom-made pellet de- signed by a nutritionist that is wheat and barley based and carefully cali- brated to produce a bal- anced diet of protein, en- ergy and fat.
This is created from out of date or incorrectly packaged biscuit goods.
If the balance is out, we end up with fat pigs or poor muscle development or both!
These components com- prise the prepared ration that is 62 percent of the daily grower diet and are mixed in the following ratios: wheat 60 percent,
The ingredients are
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