Piglets and Puppies

Last week we brought all the piglets to their new home at Full Circle Farm.  They were able to duck under the electric fence, and had been becoming more and more of a nuisance.   It was cute having them drift around like a group of little spotty sausages, but they would get into mischief - they knocked over potted plants, got into the garden, and rooted everything up around the sink.  Ethan had to cut one of them out of the electric netting one day, I had to dramatically scare them away from the milking area on a regular basis, as they could easily slip through the gate.  BAD piglets!

They got harder and harder to shoo away because Clothilde has been gradually taming them.  They used to squeak and run away like the Big Bad Wolf was after them if anyone without a bucket got close, but since she started "scaring" them back inside the fence, they quickly learned that it was no big deal and became bold and fearless.

They were fairly easy to catch by putting a dish of food down inside a dog kennel, but then had to be caught and lifted into another cage in the back of the truck.  I worked the cage door, and Ethan did the really hard part of grabbing them and being deafened by their horrible squealing.  They really don't like it when their feet leave the ground.  Our friend PJ was also helping, and recorded it as a ring tone for when her family calls.

I was worried about the squealing upsetting their mama, Star, but she was busy making more piglets right then with the boar, Tresspassers William.  She was DONE with this particular batch, and had been trying to wean them.  She wouldn't lay down for them any more, but they would still stand up and nurse while she was eating and distracted.

After dropping off the piglets, who seemed none the worse after their long journey (perhaps a little dizzy), we looked at some Great Pyrenees puppies.  We are going to be bringing one home in a couple of weeks as a new livestock guardian dog.  And oh my!  I did not expect them to be so incredibly roly-poly cute!  We have never had a puppy before, having gotten our previous dog, Belle, as an adult.  So much fun to look forward to, but I think the challenge will be to still have a livestock guardian dog, and not a pet.

Eight Little Piggies

Star had piglets!  Eight little piggies!  They are up and running around now, and there are the cutest little squeaks and grunts coming from that area.  Occasionally there are horrible squealings when the favorite nipple is being fought over (we thought one was stuck in the fence or getting stepped on, but it was only being deprived of the one favorite nipple).

Of all the kinds of babies that are born out here, I think piglets are my favorite.  They are so fun to watch.  It seems like the goat kids are always lethargically napping in a big puddle when we are out there, and the calves are always very flighty.  The piglets are always up to something.

New Piggies

Ethan got new pigs this weekend.  They are the ugliest pigs I've ever seen.  They look like Bavmorda's death dogs from the movie Willow.  Or like someone's cruel science experiment to combine pigs, dogs and rats.  They have long noses, small feet, narrow faces and evil-looking eyes.  They look exactly like the Florida wild pigs, which they probably are.  They have extremely long hair, about 2-3 inches long that sticks straight up along their back when they are upset.
At first I couldn't believe Ethan had bought them, they were so incredibly ugly.  Mirin, who had gone along but spent most of the time while the pigs were being rounded up playing with another kid there, started complaining about them as soon as they were out.  He was saying, "I don't want to eat those pigs, they're too ugly."
Every time I see them, they get a little less weird-looking.  I suppose they should be good, hardy pigs, coming from wild stock.  They were in stark contrast to our Glouster Old Spots, who looked like little pink sausages next to them.  They have been separated for now, so Star and Black ear are free-ranging for the first time in the paddock where the goats just have been.

It was nerve wracking to put them out, because we have so much invested in them, but they are extremely tame and well bucket-trained, and the electric was on along the hog panel fence the old pig area, so they were use to zappy fences.  We had recently gotten a new issue of the Stockman Grass Farmer that had an article on pasturing pigs.  Ethan said he couldn't even look at the article that night, he was too worried they would bust through the fence and escape.

New Piggies

I've been rather distracted lately with holidays and such.  Last week we butchered Fred, and he turned out to be 280 lbs hanging weight, which means he was probably around 400 or more lbs live weight.  He was huge!  We've gotten about a gallon of leaf lard already (leaf lard is the highest-quality lard from the fat inside the pig), and I have a big batch of headcheese simmering on the stove.  We have so much food right now.  I still have the blood to make blood cake with, Ethan also got a rabbit on Sunday, the Americana pullets have started laying their pretty green eggs, Matilda has been making extra milk and the children have been so excited about pulling up the massive turnips we've been getting out of the garden, so the kitchen has been exceptionally busy.

Anyway, another distraction is our newest addition.  We got two new little piglets last week!
These are pigs to keep.  They are gilts, and we are hoping for them to have lots of piglets.
They are Gloucester Old Spots, which Ethan was not really excited about when I first told him (he doesn't like "cute" animals, and it didn't help that the Craigslist ad had a link to a Countryside and Small Stock Journal aritcle--a publication he disdains).  But he cheered up about it when we met the people and found out they grow their own open-pollinated corn to feed the pigs and let them out to graze and stuff.

Another good thing about them is that they are extremely friendly already.  They are bucket-trained and like being scratched, although they still squeal frightfully if you try to pick them up.  We are still working on names.  

Fred E. Pig

This is Fred Pig.  He was the runty one of the last batch of pigs.  Being slightly smaller than everyone, he got pushed out of the way by his seven companions and was still way too small to eat last spring when it was cool enough to slaughter.  We kept him for us and let him grow all summer, and with none of his other companions around to push him away, he has grown enormous.  He's just huge.

He's a good pig.  He's happy and healthy.  When we come out to do the chores he runs alongside in his paddock by the driveway.  A few days after it rains he becomes a black pig.  He's got a wallow in the woods somewhere.  As it dries up he gets pinker and pinker.  We'll come out and he'll have only a pink butt, where he didn't quite fit in all the way, or just his sides will be muddy.  I love watching him leap over logs and squeeze through the trees, making  the "woof-woof" sound that pigs make when they're excited (strangely, I've never heard a pig say oink).  He's amazing agile for an animal his size.

It's been so nice to have a pig on the farm this whole time.  Usually we would have gotten new piglets by now, but we really need to make some changes and improvements to our pig set-up.  Fred and his friends were in a large wooded paddock the whole time, and they did a great job of clearing out the overly-dense underbrush.  It used to be so thick you couldn't see the large trees, but now you can see them clearly (and they look kind of relieved.  It's not good for large trees to have so much underbrush beneath them).  I'd like to give the land a rest.  I wonder what will grow there next year in the space left from all the little laurel oaks.  I wonder if we'll get some new wildflowers, like after a burn.

We need to finish the rest of the pig paddocks before we get another pig, but I so hope someday to have a sow and have our own little piglets.  Having babies on the farm is just so much fun.  There's so much to look forward to every day, to see how they've grown.  (The baby rabbits are hopping out of the nest box now, they are so cute!).

Piggies

The pigs we are currently raising and have been very happy with are not a standard breed of pig. They don’t get as large as other pigs—only about 100 lbs. They are unusually colored and of all different varieties. Some are black, some red, some pink and grey, some spotted tan and brown. One has a white stripe on his nose and around his middle. They are “brush hogs,” almost like wild pigs and they are very hardy and love the free-range set up. They are fed the organic pig feed from Countryside Naturals, which is supplemented by the acorns, bugs and roots they are finding.

Our first pigs were raised on where our garden is now. We had hoped they would be very destructive and root the area up entirely. Instead they mostly lounged around and scratched on the gate, which ended up breaking and being replaced. After a disaster involving a moveable electric goat fence which the pigs immediately found they could get out of by lifting the unelectified bottom wire with their nose, we put the new piglets in a smaller pasture that we hoped they wouldn’t tear up too much, but they are anyways.

We currently have five new piglets. They are growing fast and are expected to be ready soon. They are available for a pre-arranged sale and will be cut how ever you like. If a whole pig seems like too much feel free to find a friend or neighbor to share it with you. They can be divided in half. Please email us for more details.

For our next batch of piglets we have two major concerns: Feed and erosion. The feed is expensive and is made of grains which are very energy intensive. If we can reduce feed costs, it reduces the price of the pig and makes it more affordable and better for the environment. We think good food ought to be good for the earth and priced reasonably. As far as erosion, we need to be able to move the pigs to minimize the damage they cause with their sharp hooves and by rooting.

The solution we’ve come up with is—seasonal production. Our land has lots of young live oak trees. Some of these trees bear acorns so sweet we were eating them like chestnuts last fall. With moveable electric fencing and a solar charger we can move the piglets from oak tree to oak tree in the fall and have them ready for slaughter during the coldest part of the year when they would be the fattest and best for eating and making lard. One thing we’ve really noticed with these summer piglets is that they just aren't getting fat. There’s not much reason to if it’s 90 degrees out and 100% humidity.

The only drawback is that we will only have pigs in the winter, but we think it will be well worth it. This fall we will be focusing on a perimeter fence and getting set up for next fall’s piglets, so these summer pigs will be all we’ve got for a while.