Weigh the feed; never feed by appetite
A pig's appetite is not a measuring instrument. Left with an open feeder, most growing pigs will eat well past what their frame can use and lay the surplus down as fat, especially once growth slows. Rationing means the feed is weighed or scooped by a marked measure, twice a day, and the amount follows a plan you review weekly. Start from the feed maker's guide for the pig's age and weight, then let condition, not the chart alone, make the final call. Keep a simple record of what each group is on; when a pig fattens, you want to know exactly which ration produced it, and memory will not tell you in six weeks' time.
Learn the rib test
Condition is judged by hand. Stand over the pig and rub firmly along the ribcage: on a correctly rationed grower you can feel ribs under a smooth covering of flesh, pressing moderately hard, but you cannot see rib outlines across the pen. Hip bones and shoulder should feel rounded, not sharp and not buried. If you have to dig to find ribs, the ration is too generous; if ribs show as the pig walks, it needs more. Check every pig individually rather than judging the pen's average, because the average hides the one bully who is fat and the one shy feeder who is falling behind on the same ration.
Adjust in small steps, at the right moments
Change the daily amount a little at a time — a handful or two per meal — and give the change a week before judging it. Sudden cuts make pigs hungry, noisy and prone to fighting at the trough; sudden increases go straight to backfat. Young pigs just after weaning need their ration building up carefully as their digestion settles, and gilts being kept for breeding want steady, leaner growth than pigs being finished for meat, because overweight breeding animals have more trouble later. Weigh pigs if you have a crate and scales; if not, a weight tape around the girth gives a workable trend to ration against.
Separate feeding stops the double dinners
In a group pen, the ration you put in is not the ration each pig gets. Dominant pigs eat at two trough positions while timid ones circle. Spread feed along a long trough or in several piles with room for every pig to eat at once, or feed individuals in stalls or divided sections if your housing allows. Watch one full feed: if the same pig is displaced every day, that pig's poor growth is a housing problem, not a ration problem, and no amount of extra feed in the shared trough will reach it.
Everything edible counts in the ration
The weighed ration only controls growth if it is the whole diet. Kitchen scraps, windfall fruit, milk by-products and treat handfuls all carry energy, and an unrecorded bucket of extras can undo careful measuring. Count anything regular in the daily allowance, and keep the rest genuinely occasional.
Logging each pig's weighed ration and condition notes as its duty in KinsLe's Care Teams means the person feeding on any given day gives the amount you set — and the weekly adjustment you make from the rib test is the one that actually happens.