Our rent-a-ram Zeus first “serviced” the ewes on December 14, which means if any of them got knocked up that first day, we’re looking at a due date of May 10, with a “be on the lookout” range of May 1 through May 22. If any of them got pregnant on his last day at the farm, the due date is July 5. Meaning our window for lambing is May 1 through July 17. That sounds like a really long time to be at the ready.
Given Barney the Boar’s recent exploits, we could have piglets on June 20.
oh.my.god.
This was just too good not to share verbatim.
Barney got into the ladies today. He could not have been in there more than 2 hours before I got him back into his pen and shut tight.
He did try to mount them all though.
He also hurt his nose, I think the ring got caught on the fence as he was scooting under it. Some blood and torn flesh.
I tried to clip the thing off but he screamed and ran, I should have waited until it healed. He’s depressed now.
What do other people do when they have a cold?
Love ya,
-W
While I chronicled Barney’s arrival, I never did post a proper picture, so consider this his formal introduction.
As you can see, he looks much more like a wild hog, with his elongated snout, than the girls. He also has a “humane ring” in his nose to keep him from rooting. We’re going to remove it, although I must say he does a pretty good jobs tearing up the ground in spite of it.
He’s very friendly, and Scout appears quite taken with him, hanging out by his enclosure all day instead of her usual post on the back porch. Now that the ladies are located next to him, he makes these odd grunts that Will describes as a Harley Davidson idling, but what must be the pork equivalent of pillow talk. And now, filed under the category of too much information, is a shot of just how absurdly large his balls are.
I know, right?
Posted in Pigs
This weekend reminded us of how lucky we are to have such good friends, especially of the “sure, I can help” variety.
In preparation for early vegetable planting, it was time to relocate the pigs from the lower yard below the pond to the wooded area at the top of the pasture. There were two major obstacles. The first was hitching the pig house to the truck and dragging it up the driveway, through the cattle gate, under the pine tree and across the pasture without damaging our property or the structure. The second was getting the pigs from their electric fence enclosure to their new enclosure without them getting loose between the lower yard and the pasture where there is no fencing to inhibit their escape.
Dilemma No.1 went smoothly. The house held up fine, and fit through the gate without much trouble. The driveway only has minimal skid marks in the gravel and the pasture is much less torn up from the dragging than I expected. Will and our three fabulous helpers (and my father – my folks were down visiting) rigged up two wires of electric fencing to establish the new enclosure. Now to get the residents.
Dilemma No. 2 was much more problematic, so I’ll break it down into the various tactics attempted. A few things worth noting before I get started… tamworths are one of the few breeds of domestic pig that were never crossed with Chinese pigs, making them the closest in temperament to a wild pig (read: not docile). Also, these gilts are at least 150 pounds at this point.
Take a pig for a walk: Will and I got rather hooked on the BBC series River Cottage, and in one episode Hugh took his prize pig to the fair. He was able to show him around by walking next to the pig with a board on one side (to block the pig’s field of vision) and a stick on the other that he’d use to tap at the pig to get him to move forward. It appeared so civilized, like a dog show.
Will modified this a bit for our first attempt. He’d get the pigs to stay still by filling their feed bucket, get a rope around one’s neck like a leash while two helpers got on either side of the pig with boards of plywood we had lying around and a third helper with a bucket of food would lead the pig towards her new home.
It turns out our pigs aren’t very fond of the leash concept. Also, desire for food does not trump the desire for freedom, even in a pig.
The team plugged away at this effort long after I would have thrown in the towel. We couldn’t even control the pig long enough to walk it forward more than 5 feet, so there was no way we’d be able to make the football field-length journey without a jail break.
Truck and a ramp: Time to justify the 4 wheel drive pickup. Will gathered all the plywood sheets and some 2 x 8′s and constructed a makeshift ramp. We placed the food bucket in the bed of the truck and scattered apples along the length of the ramp. We even added bedding to the ramp to make it seem more appealing. Needless to say, no one took the bait.
We tried leading them up with apples, sitting on the ramp to walk up with them, holding the boards to the side of the ramp so no one would fall off, but we never got more than the front hooves on the ramp before the pigs would retreat backwards.
Wrestle ‘em: At this point, I looked at Will and said “You’re just going to have to catch them and toss ‘em in the back of the truck.” When he asked how I proposed he catch them, I replied “tackle.” After some brainstorming, everyone decided to chase the pigs around a bit to tire them out. And so it began…
First chase…
Then go in for the tackle…
Attempt tackle…
Gather the troops to get control of the animal…
Tie up her legs so no one gets kicked…
Pick her up and carry her to the truck…
Place her in the truck bed and untie her…
Line the sides of the bed with plywood so she doesn’t jump out and drive her to the pasture…
And finally, use the plywood to make an off-ramp and coax her out of the truck and into her new home.
Repeat… two more times.
Then I ply everyone with beers and sandwiches as my way of doing something other than just taking pictures the whole time. It’s a feeble thank you, one that we’ll someday supplement with some house-cured bacon almost a year from now.
Have I mentioned what amazing friends we have?
I’m happy to report that the girls are all settled in nicely now and seem to have forgiven us for the trauma of Saturday.
Posted in Pigs
On Tuesday, Will drove down to Roanoke to pick up our new boar. The drive was beautiful, but longer than he expected.
Upon arrival, there were two pigs to choose from. The first was very lean, but with a nice arch to his back and a tight curl to his tail, all qualities we’ve read are desirable. The other hog had a shorter tail and wasn’t quite as arched (he sat lower to the ground). Now for the goods – the first pig had more “even” testicles, and the second pig appear to have one ball larger than the other. However, Will ultimately choose the second pig, as the hams on him was much fuller and bigger, and his temperament was calmer. Thinking in terms of breeding for meat vs. for show, the second, fuller pig seemed like a better bet in terms of yield. Testicles be damned.
He went straight into the back of the truck, easy as pie. However, the longer drive did impact the day’s schedule, as Will made it home just in time to hop in the car and drive to preschool to pick up Alston (which is about an hour round trip), leaving the new hog in the back of the pickup.
After parking Alston in front of the TV (notice a theme around here?), Will headed up to the newly fenced in enclosure in the woods to let the boar into his new home. He built a make shift ramp off the back of the cab and opened the gate, and the boar didn’t budge. Will started to push him from behind and he just started shaking. He tried a food bribe and still no forward movement. Then Will got self-conscious about the ramp, and after some additional fortification tried to motivate the boar again. Still nothing. So Will took the goat carrier cage off the back of the truck (it’s bottomless) and hopped in with the pig.
At which point, Alston comes running up the hill (the show must have ended), fighting with Lady over his beloved stuffed giraffe. Thank god the child is obsessed with trucks, as Will was able to stash him in the cab of the pickup and he pretended to drive while the rest of the adventure ensued.
First Will tried pulling on his front legs, no luck. The pig was facing the wrong way so he grabbed him from behind to swing him in the right direction and then proceeded to push at the boar to coax him towards the edge. Because we’re talking about a 200 pound animal, this “pushing” probably looked a bit more like dry humping, as Will had to thrust all of his weight against the back of the pig to inch him forward. Once the boar reached the ramp and placed a foot on it, he ran down into his enclosure. Mission accomplished.
Unfortunately, Will’s victory lap was quickly deflated when he opened the cab of the truck only to be hit by a wall of stink that was unmistakably toddler diarrhea, and every object from the glove compartment was strewn about the seats.
***
Upon hearing this story, I asked my husband “So, what did you name him?”
“Barney – he’s not a Fred.”
Posted in Pigs
The pigs couldn’t be more pleased about our recent cider-pressing foray, as they get to dine on the apple pulp.
We’ve also started getting the leftover whey from a local goat cheese maker, which is a great, free, healthy source of calories for the pigs. One man’s trash, aye?
Posted in Pigs
We’ve located a Tamworth boar we could buy to knock up Wilma and Betty (don’t worry, we haven’t eaten Blossom… yet), but there’s no option to rent, so to speak. Are we ready for a boar or should we just go with artificial insemination?
On the pro-boar side, we’d have a limitless (okay, so at least for a couple of years) supply of piglet potion – no need to buy pig semen, pay a vet to do the deed, or have to learn to perform the procedure ourselves (and buy the necessary gear).
On the pro-AI side, we simply don’t have that much land, which means we don’t have enough space to keep the mister separated from the gals. Translation: we’ll be all piglets, all the time… which runs us back against the space issue. We can’t sustain more than 20 pigs on this farm (even that’s an optimistic guess), and Tamworths average 8 piglets per litter but can pop out as many as 12. Compounding the issue, pigs raised for bacon are kept 2 or more months longer than “porkers” (8-10 months vs. 6-8 months), so with a gestation of 3 month+, our gals will likely pop out the next batch before the first piglets are ready for processing. (And we’d have to worry about papa knocking up his now of age female progeny.) It already smells enough like pig here with 3. And we simply don’t need that much bacon.
The other downside is that, unlike all our other animals, we can’t just change our mind on a boar and send him to the abattoir. Meat from an uncastrated male pig has a funky flavor referred to as boar taint. So if he doesn’t work out, I just bought some really expensive future dog food.
However. Instead of raising all our piglets for consumption, we could sell them as weaners to other farmers (just like how we procured our gals in the first place as 8 week olds). At $125 a weaner, that may have a nicer profit margin than raising the pig as a “bacon-er” when you calc in all that feed. So now we’re back to considering the boar, assuming we can drum up enough potential buyers.
Posted in Pigs
My husband did an incredibly responsible thing – he scheduled a visit with our local extension agent to make sure everything looked okay around the farm. Here’s a brief run down.
Sheep
The good news is everyone looks healthy. The not so good news is that we may not have enough pasture to support 5 ewes and their lambs. The d’uh news is that the reason the sheep haven’t been eating much hay is that the stuff we bought turns out to be loaded with something called foxtail, which they don’t like. Also, it’s invasive. Awesome. The bad news is that it turns out that our pasture has the “wrong kind of grass” so it looks like we’ll be attempting to pull up wire grass (we were told to RoundUp and put the sheep somewhere else, but we don’t have a somewhere else, nor am I excited about the prospects of using RoundUp) and seed for things like clover. We also need to get our pH checked, so we are now equipped with soil samples.
Pigs
The pigs look great. The aggression we were worried about is really considered playfulness (think dogs). Also a plus, we’ve probably been feeding them too much so we can cut back a bit, which will help expenses. The pasture over winter, woods by summer plans was met with approval as well.
Chickens
The birds look healthy. She was a bit skeptical about our plans to breed without an incubator. Also, mid conversation, while hanging out with our New Hampshire Red rooster in the yard, a loud cock-a-doodle-do came from inside the coop. Turns out our mystery chick is a dude, which probably means he’ll be dinner sometime soon so as not to have two fighting cocks. If they can keep it civil until we move the New Hampshires down to the lower coop for baby-making this April, he may get a stay of execution. That being said, his penchant for crowing at 3 AM and waking up the toddler doesn’t bode well for his longevity.
Ducks
She’d never heard of ducks that don’t swim. The fact that my most common search phrase for this blog is “ducks won’t swim” begs to differ.
Overall, it was a good visit. It’s comforting to hear that all your animals looks healthy from someone who actually knows what she’s talking about.
I’ll start with a non-sequitor… now that I have a sweet camera, I’m going to post large photos, ’cause I like to show off. And then the posts seem longer.
The pigs are doing fine. Originally, we only thought we were getting 2, so we picked out the names Wilma and Betty. And then we got 3, so the third is Blossom Dearie, as their original owner only met us because Will was playing a Blossom Dearie album at the restaurant and she introduced herself to compliment his taste in music.
Have you ever heard someone say “Actually, pigs are very clean animals” or something like that? They were lying.
They step in their food while they eat, their poop smells really bad, and (at least girl pigs) pee straight back, I’m talking Volvo station wagon whose back windshield fluid nozzle is busted and it “pees” on the car behind it at a stoplight straight back. Yes, I am aware that was a weird metaphor. But back to the peeing. Because it’s not like a dog where the boys aim and the girls squat, but instead it just shoots straight out, they often pee on each other accidentally. It’s the projectile vomit of the world of urination. I cannot emphasize how weird it looks.
And the eating? The colloquialisms all fit. Whatever you give them, no matter how much, they will eat until it is gone. 5 bushels of apple pressing pulp? No problem. Oops, was that 4 scoops of food instead of 2? Already devoured.
However. The pigs are by far the friendliest animals on the farm (dogs and cats not included). Wilma likes to be pet, Betty endures pets and Blossom avoids them… guess who is most likely to become bacon before breeding season? They squeal if you come anywhere near their pen within two hours of breakfast or dinner, and they are curious about what’s going on around them. I don’t know that I’d go so far as call them smart, but there is distinct intelligence. Even if they pee funny.
Posted in Pigs
We [thought we] had everything ready but one crucial piece – a way to transport our three little piggies. Sure, we have a pickup, but we needed some sort of cage or top so the oinks wouldn’t abandon ship mid-drive. Will Googled the crap out of pig cage, pig carrier, transporting pigs, and nothing of note came up. So we decided to get creative. We started calling friends of ours who had recently house broken dogs, to see if we could buy their crates. I managed to buy one off a colleague for a super-reasonable price, but Will deemed it too small, at which point I started Googling “tamworth pig weight 8 weeks” to no avail. Internet, that’s -2 for you.
So, by chance Will is on the phone with the dog rescue lady (we’re getting a Great Pyrenees after all, but that’s for another post), and mentioned that we had a dog crate and she says “Oh, just use a Goat Carrier” in a completely matter of fact tone. In the way I’d say “You should buy a belt” if someone told me their pants were falling down. I’m convinced that all country knowledge is like this, as sure enough the local Tractor Supply place had goat carriers in stock. It’s all about asking the right question (read: NOT pig carrier?). So now we have this large, bottomless cage that sits in the bed of the pickup and has a sliding door so you can easily get the animal(s) in and out without too much fuss. There it is internet, Pig Carrier = actually just buy a Goat Carrier. Consider yourself countrified.
This morning, we load up into the truck, Will, Alston and me, and head to Oak Hill Farm in Palmyra, VA. The piglets are adorable. The farm hands lures the mama pig into the stable and the piglets follow, so as to make it easier to catch them. He then picks up the piglets one by one and hands them to another guy to load into the cage, all while the oink is squealing her little face off. It is a blood curdling sound, hearing a pig in full panic. Poor Alston had no idea what was going on. But the whole process only took about five minutes for all three, and we were ready to get back on the road.
Before we left, Will started asking questions about fencing. He’d erected electric fencing, but the pigs were smaller than we expected (Watson-sized, actually, which is to say beagle), and the other day, while the juice was on, Watson tested the wires, got shocked, but instead of jumping back he jumped forward and ended up on the inside of the enclosure. So there was doubt about our fence’s fortitude. The farmer though it sounded like we’d be fine, or at worst we’d have to run another wire so there was more barrier lower to the ground.
The ride home, Will freaked out about the fence.
We get home, and pull the pickup into the enclosure. To play it safe, Will grabs only one pig from the carrier and sets her down. I swear after being out less than one minute, she nudged the fence, jumped a little and walked right on through.
Did I mention my husband is often right?
Will starts running towards the pig, so the pig starts running away, towards the road. Watson, who was hanging out on the front porch, sees running and naturally comes down to investigate. He catches a glimpse of the piglet and immediately takes chase, so now Will is running after the pig who is sprinting away from the dog, all while Alston shouts “Ma, pig! Ma, pig! Ooohhh pig!”
I manage to grab Watson and get him into the house while Will runs down the road chasing after a screaming pig. Somehow, and I still have no idea how, he manages to catch her, and so it’s back to the goat carrier until we figure out what to do.
This is when defeat sets in. There were a hundred other things on the to do list for today, but unless we expect the piggies to live out their days in the back of an F150, it’s fence time. I think we shouldn’t call ourselves farmers. We haven’t harvested anything yet. We should call ourselves fencers. We still had some hog wire left over from reinforcing the pasture’s horse fencing, but it’s another trip to the hardware store to buy metal posts to hold everything up.
Once the posts are in the ground and Will starts unraveling the fence, we joke about potential names for the farm… he suggests Third Time’s The Charm Farm – we get it right eventually. I go with Funny Farm – because you’d have to be crazy to try this.
After about two hours, the new, smaller hog wire fence is up and the piglets are in. We have the electric fence on as well, in case they root under the hogwire. Not that we think it will do any good until we string up yet another wire come Monday. Oh well, at least the pigs seem to like their new digs. Let’s just hope they stay put over night.
It’s lucky these animals are both cute and delicious, or there would be a feral Tamworth wandering greater Esmont tonight.
Posted in Pigs
