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Japanese
grows healthy pig in "dirt floor. One of the more interesting persons we met recently was Kotaro Nishiki, a Japanese retiree who is married to a Fillipina and is doing a little farming in Baybay, Leyte. He has small piggery with a few sows, what's unique about his pigs is they are reared in "dirt" flooring yet they are very healthy without any need for vaccination against diseases. He does not bathe his pigs, nor does he remove the manure from the floor. Yet, his piggery does not smell the usual piggery you and I are familiar with. His secret is Lacto bacillus that he himself makes. He inoculates his "dirt" flooring with his lacto bachillus which, he says, cleans up the pig pen. The Lacto bacillus eats up the bad bacteria and other harmful organisms. The pig pen, has its own roof and walls. For flooring, Nishiki dug an excavation of about a meter deep and filled it up with rice straw, rice hull, sawdust and other vegetative waist materials on the farm. When we met him recently, he came to Manila to buy the chopper-crusher of Alex Reyes because he would like to crush the coconut husks for his pig floor as well as making compost for organic farming. The excavation is fully filled with the crushed materials, compacted and then inoculated with his Lacto bachillus. Nishiki explains that Lacto bacillus is actually found everywhere but you have to isolate it and then multiply it in big numbers before using them to inoculate the flooring of the pig pen. Even the ordinary layman can culture Lacto bacillus. The process involves boiling soybeans or any other beans. After boiling, the boiled beans is incubated under anaerobic conditions (air is excluded just like in silage making) so the Lacto bacillus will multiply. Nishiki explains that only the Lacto bacilli thrive under anaerobic conditions. After a week or so, the Lacto bacillus is further multiplied in big numbers by feeding it with milk. Later the milk is diluted with water for inoculation the flooring for the pigs. The trick is to maintain 60 percent moisture content in the flooring to keep the Lacto bacilli very active, according to Nishiki. Nishiki feeds his pigs with ordinary commercial feeds but he supplements his feed with a lot of greens to keep costs down. He says that he also grows his chickens under the same principle. The flooring is the same as the one he uses in his piggery . And the chickens are very healthy even without any medication. Of course, the piggery with Lacto bacillus has its own limitations. It is more suitable for small scale piggery. In traditional commercial piggeries, so many pigs can be stocked on one pen. In the case of Nishiki's system, a 4 meter by 10 meter pig pen may accommodate only about 20 pigs.
By
Zac B. Saria |
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