The treats are a second, invisible ration
Nobody decides to overfeed the pigs; they simply feed them twice. There is the measured ration, weighed with good intentions, and then there is the bucket of kitchen scraps, the windfall apples, the children's treat handfuls — none of it recorded, all of it energy. Pigs convert extras to fat efficiently, and because each contribution looks small, the pig can be carrying obvious extra condition before anyone connects it to the scraps. The first step is honesty: for one week, keep every single thing the pigs eat in one place, in one bucket, and look at the total. Most people are surprised, and that surprise is the diagnosis and the cure in one.
Bring extras inside the ration, not on top of it
From that week on, extras stop being extras. Decide a modest daily allowance for scraps and treats, weigh or measure it like feed, and take roughly the same weight off the main ration so the pig's total day stays the same. A pig being finished for meat can carry a slightly more generous allowance than a breeding gilt you want lean and long-lived, but neither needs an open kitchen bucket. When visitors or children want the pleasure of feeding the pigs, hand them a measured portion taken from that day's ration. The pigs still get their audience, and the day's total never changes.
Choose scraps that fill without fattening
Not all scraps arrive equal. Vegetable peelings, outer leaves, greens and spent garden produce give pigs bulk, occupation and variety for relatively little energy — good currency for an animal that likes to eat. Bread, pastry, cake, cooked rice and fatty leftovers are the opposite: dense energy in small mouthfuls, and they are the usual culprits behind a pig that fattens while its ration card looks blameless. Windfall fruit sits between the two; offer it in counted handfuls, since a bucket of apples is a sugar load. Never feed meat or meat-containing kitchen waste: it is illegal for pigs in many jurisdictions because of disease risk, and it has no place in a home ration regardless.
Watch the pig, not the bucket
Even a tidy scrap system needs checking against the animal. Rub along the ribs weekly: you should find them under firm pressure, beneath a smooth covering, not dig for them and not see them. If condition keeps climbing while scraps are measured, the allowance itself is too generous for that pig, and it comes down further. Do the same check before blaming the bag feed — often the ration on the card is right and the fat arrived by the bucket, one kind handful at a time.
One feeder, one record, no double treats
Pigs get fat at the rate of the whole household's kindness. If three people each give a small treat, the pig received a large one. Agree one treats allowance per pig per day and one person — or one shared note — in charge of it.
Putting the treat allowance inside the pig's feeding duty in KinsLe's Care Teams means whoever feeds sees the full day's intake, ration and scraps together, and the completed duty is timestamped so nobody kindly repeats it.