Our new Projects begin July 10, 2008

Less than a year ago many things seemed far away. There has been a picture of doom and gloom painted over doing business in the Philippines by mainly expats here. But me being me all thats been ignored and looking to create a future for my family. Aswell as help improve the lives of my wifes family.

So far the piggery is now built and has received its first batch of piglets yesterday :-

piglets

Now after spending a lot of time listening to other expats i seem to find that they look at the world through different eyes. Im a different generation from most of them. BUT they are very negative with most businesses. Pigs the food is too expensive, chickens they get stolen etc. etc. But one thing ive noticed when im in the Philippines is the average Filipino is very versatile in getting by. Having a large piggery may not be successful. But if you have a small piggery and chickens you process and sell yourself either as fresh meat or as food in an eatery you are already almost maximising your product only other thing that could improve it is making your own feeds. Which is possible with some practice and knowledge. This is stage one of our projects.

The others are on the way not far behind. Goat breeding and building our first house, which will also be some what of a project as we are trialing a new type of house not so wide spread in production in the Philippines. The downside to this is ill have to head back to the UK in August to start rebuilding the bank for funds for the projects. Although the pigs sell every 3 1/2 – 4 months with Aprils calculations we are currently looking at a return of around P40,000 all going well and likely to be a bit more. Which can yield around – P200,000 per annum before increasing stock sizes. Im hoping that we can get the pigs and goats bringing in a regular income within 6 – 8 months. To help build the stocks. Increasing every time they goto market. We have plenty of room for expansion currently and if the house building goes as planned pigs can also be stocked up at the house aswell fingers crossed.

ONE MONTH ON

One month on and weve had to make some changes aswell as added a bit of expansion. Firstly the type of bedding we had didnt work. It kept the odour down but seems to have created worms so thats been scrapped. Second issue was water we initially started with a basin full of water but pigs being pigs there would always be one or two of them in the middle of it which then creates the problem of cross contamination after walking in theyre own urine and poo. So we have altered everything. This is the reason to start small.. imagine if you had invested hundreds of thousands to find it doesnt work. I look at most projects as a cook in a house. Better to be told what is good and bad by my family before trying to get hundreds of people to eat it.

This is the new water feeder which is fed from a seperate tank from the water mains which allows it to always have water rather than relying on the water from the mains which seems to come and go off at certain times of the day.

 Basically the pigs can push the valve to get theyre own water which saves on waste and greatly reduces the contamination risk.

The next addition was due to the problems we are currently having with the bedding the second pen has now received its concrete floor and a septic tank. This currently allows us to expand into 30 piglets at a time. But emptying the tank is P2000 a hit we will see how things work out.

Everything is going well and keeping the project small has helped a lot because we can afford to learn by our mistakes. The piglets are also starting to put weight on well which is great as its the whole idea of the project to make money.

Sept 2008 Stock 2 arrives

New batch getting used to the new home. Construction of pen 3 will commence this month also. Which will put the small piggery to capacity at my wifes parents. But soon enough we will be beginning the construction of the main farm.

We came across a problem while sourcing these piglets which quite simply was piglets werent ready from where we wanted the stock, there were batches of sick at other stocks, some piglet batches were smaller. All these problems made me look at where would we be when our stock is heading towards 150 pigs. The answer was simple we need to breed our own. I then looked at the health aspects and worry about introduction of other stocks what if it made ours sick? Wipe out our entire stock in one hit for a batch of 10? So we are going to start looking at breeding our own for the health of our stock aswell as it makes life easier generally once we get the artificial insemination and the right time to do it under our belt.

The funniest thing that happened on the day was what this “Kodak” moment caught which is batch one investigating the new neighbours :-

A developing problem

One thing we have discovered is pigs make a lot of waste. The issue we are currently having though is the mix of solids and liquid waste which we have now solved. But still left with a lot of liquid in the tank that we need to resolve. We have had to add a pipeline and trap to take the fluids away from entering into the tank as shown. An extra expense but was badly needed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another issue we have come against is time for looking after the Pigs is 3 x i had expected. But i didnt realise the issue was water and getting it to the pigs. We have resolved the issue by adding an electric pump and hoses to feed it. Next stage will be getting the rating (im abroad so cant find out until installed) at which point ill get a solar panel that is rated to feed the pump and maybe trickle charge batteries when not in use to also feed lighting in the evenings as the pump wont be needed more than a couple of hours a day.

Pictures as promised :-

One thing i didnt realise is that although pigs cant fly they definitly can jump! Currently an issue we  have is they can clear the sty and jumping between the pens.

The hose and pump have dropped the time needed to take care of the pigs from nearly a full day to just over an hour a day. Which proves even a little bit of technology goes a long way. The problem is quite simply there is a severe lack of investment in the Philippines at roots level. But a little bit makes a big difference.