It's Been a Minute

We Had a Pig Rodeo...

It's crazy to think that my last post was when the momma's farrowed at the end of May/beginning of June. Here we are nearing the end of August and we have reduced our piglet herd by six. We could still sell a couple of the babies if someone were to ask, but we might just keep them for meat. 

Last week it occurred to me that I should maybe check my ad on Craigslist. I had received ANY queries on the pigs when I usually do. Well, the first week I usually don't. When we decide to pray about the piggies selling then we start getting responses - funny how that works out. We also decided to post a flyer at the feed warehouse again. There wasn't any interest when we did that in the spring, but this time Tom got a call from a woman who wanted to purchase a boar for her one year old gilt. I also had received a message from a family that wanted to purchase 4! 

Tom's customer, Linda, had gotten his number at the feed warehouse and he was texting and talking with her about what her preference would be. The other party, from Washougal, was my task and I ended up exchanging texts with Andy for a little bit before they decided that they wanted to come and meet the piggies and at least start with two baby swine. 

They both came Saturday afternoon - oh boy... the pig viewing window went from 1pm to 3pm. They both arrived within a half hour or so of one another. I was pretty happy that the 1 pig couple came sooner than later since we could get Brutus out of the mix fairly quickly and then continue on with the family. 

Since Tom had talked to Linda about registering the hog later we had to at least get him tagged so that could happen if she decided she wanted to register him. He was easy to grab and get into the cage, but then I realized that he still needed an ear tag, poor dude. It's bad enough that he was tricked into coming close to be grabbed. Then he was alone in the cage, but now he needs to get a piercing. Not cool people...not cool. The hardest part about that is getting said swine to sit still just a little before proceeding to pierce its ear. Fortunately, the pain is minimal (as far as we know) and a little bread to distract them afterwards is always good. Later in the day I got a message from the buyer and he was settling in nicely with his new older female friend. He is an over-achiever ;) 

Once that was done and that couple left, we could focus on getting the four caught and into crates. Since the family was out and about picking up their craigslist finds they had a very long trailer that had a few large diamter PVC pipes on in. So they could not pull into the driveway. He was able to park on the path in front of our house though, so not all bad. 

After a bit of discussion about AGH in general and them seeing our hogs they decided to go with getting four baby swine after all. Two boys and two girls. They hope to breed for future meat and to maybe harvest one or two of these for meat for their fam. 

Oh, so I mentioned that we reduced the herd by six, if anyone was keeping count...we had a random sale a couple of weeks ago. A woman who was at a week long church reunion next door to our farm came to tell us that a couple of our pigs were outside of the fence area...Blah Blah Blah. We were ready for church and on our way out the door when she dropped by. After a minute we saw Ethel (she's the bad one) and a couple of the babies running back then we were on our way. EXCEPT as the woman was walking down the driveway she did ask if the pigs were for selling or eating. To which I replied both. This then started a longer conversation that I am not going to post about here...it's far too long and it's an old story now. Let's just say that after more conversation later in the day and my satisfaction that the one pig that she wanted would not be just a pet, we sold her a gilt. I am not sure what kind of farm she went off to, but my hope is that she (the woman) is living the self-sustainable life that she claims and that our little pig will be a part of their homesteading journey for a while to come.

ANYWAY...

All in all, Saturday was a good day - a little hectic with the sales to two separate parties, but good. I'm very please with these buyers though, they wanted breeders and they got them! Rexy & Fiona have done a good job together in their three years. Bridgette was bred twice by her littermate, Victor, so we are fairly certain that she will continue to do well.

The vibe is definitely different now. We only have gilts left - maybe they miss their brothers...hard to say. They might have been traumatized by the activities of Saturday afternoon. 

Four of the girls on Sunday morning

Hopefully they will move on from their funk and back into their piggy shenanigans before too long. Their purpose will be a year long project as we are venturing into selling meat on the hoof. That's a different chapter in this farm story though, so check back for that.

Farm life is the best life, even when sending pigs to new homes. 

JUNE!

The May homestead challenge turned toward things that I wouldn't be interested in blogging about so I just abandoned the whole thing. There were a couple of days that I thought I might write something, but decided not to.

So, the remainder of May was busy, but at the same time not very. I got started with getting the garden planted which was halted after several days of 90+ degree days. Not my kind of weather. I can tolerate the mid-80s, but anything more and I'm no longer interested in spending time outdoors. 

Then at the end of the month our young sow, Bridgette (aka Little Momma) had a litter of 5 piglets. I have to be honest, I wasn't expecting her to have another litter. However, looking back I should have known. She hadn't had a heat cycle in several months. Duuuuh. All of her babies are doing quite well and this is her second litter of 5 and she hasn't lost any, this litter or the last one. They are quite skittish and even after a couple of days of sitting with them they are not interested in letting us even pick them up without sounding the alarm to momma.

Two days later Fiona (aka Big Momma) farrowed 9 piglets - her biggest litter so far. The difference with this litter is that she stayed outside and away from the other pigs for a few days. So Tom didn't do anything to move her. A good decision since she probably wouldn't move anyway. When Tom discovered that she had her piglets underneath the pear tree he found that there were 8, but later found that one had been squished. Friday morning, even though the remaining 8 made it through the night, one more had been stepped on and died.

We have been spending a lot of time with Fiona and babies - due to her size we try to keep a watch (as much as possible) on her litters so to keep the losses to a minimum. In a few more days once the piglets are a little bigger we won't have to keep an eye on them as much. The first week is pretty critical. At least where Fiona is concerned. She doesn't move fast and we aren't sure that she knows that she has landed on one of her babies once she goes down. Even so, she wouldn't be able to get up quick enough to set the baby free.

The other thing that we have with her litter are two very runty piglets. One of them, a female, didn't seem to be putting any weight on as she should within the first 24 hours and continued to look listless and weak. On Thursday I had the sense that maybe we should get the powdered colostrum out and start bottle feeding her. The itty-bitty piggy took to the bottle and kept coming back for more. A barista friend of ours from Starbucks had come for a visit to meet the babies and helped with getting the colostrum to the runty baby. Alicia was so taken by her that we decided to name her Alice. Alice might be a keeper, maybe. 

Even after all of our visitors had gone for the day little Alice continued to come to suckle on the bottle. Quite a bit actually. By the evening she had so much in her that she actually started to pee after she ate - a good sign!

Alice

We were able to go to bed without worrying so much about her. As of Friday she had zero interest in the colostrum and actually looked like she filled out a little bit, overnight! Kinda crazy that they can change so much in 24 hours.  I spent a lot of Friday and some of Saturday observing her. Alice was feeding right along side her siblings and seemed to be much more feisty. A VERY good sign. She was so feisty that when one of her littermates started to play with her she would start playing too! Oh, my heart...

We LOVE her!!

With each litter that is born here on our farm we learn more and more. Even just the day before Fiona actually farrowed I noticed some different behavior in her. She had been spending a lot of time over by the pear trees and in the back yard in general. The day before she had her piglets was a very warm, so I spent a lot of the day under the tree with her and reading and playing Pokemon GO. During that time I witnessed Fiona chasing off one of the junior swine. She was not happy with Edith hanging around, not even a little! That was a very out of character thing to see in her. Later in the evening I spent more time in the yard and watching her - it appeared that she was breathing very heavily. In retrospect I should have investigated before heading in for the night. She probably was laboring while I was sitting there watching her because the next morning were piglets.

Because she had decided to farrow al fresco we "had" to create a safe space for Fiona and her babies. Tom slapped together a pallet house next to the pig house, mainly for Rex. However, it wasn't used much so Tom relocated most of the pallets and built a wall around Fiona's area.

This is phase 1 of Fiona's special accommodations

It isn't totally predator proof, but at least there is a little bit of a barrier to ward off something becoming interested in Fiona and kids. Also, this offers a little bit of a wind block. Not as much as I would like, but enough that the babies have a safe space to goof around. There were showers in the weather forecast for Saturday and just to be safe we decided to put up the old canopy that was hardly used over this space...

Welcome to Pigopolis 2.0

I thought we would really look more "hillbilly" like, but it's not too bad, I suppose a tarp would have really topped off the look ;) This mostly keeps the area dry, although I think because she is under a tree that is all leafed out, she would have been just fine. So the canopy is mostly for our own peace of mind. 

The last thing that was added was a heat lamp. Fiona farrowed on the evening of the hottest day last week and the temps have just been going down from there. The piglets don't have any fat on their little bodies to keep them warm so the heat lamp seemed to be a necessary item. Well, we thought so anyway. The babies had no interest in the tank or the lamp all day yesterday so we just unplugged the lamp until evening and we were heading in for the night. This morning, all seven were in the livestock tank (creep) enjoying the heat of the red bulb. Perhaps they will embrace the creep for it's intended purpose instead of using it as their bathroom facility as one of them did yesterday. The biggest one went into the creep after feeding and proceeded to pee. Fortunately they are small and are not producing a ton of pee or poo. We'll see how they progress with their pooing and peeing as they grow older.

We have decided to keep the sows separated from Rex so they can have a break. They both had a two litters in the last 6 months. Poor Fiona never had a chance to get her bikini-body back. Once these litters have been weaned we'll work on making sure that Fiona gets her physical condition back in check. Once she is back to a more reasonable size/weight we'll go ahead and let her breed again, but not before and certainly not two litters so close together. I love the piglets and all, but they take a lot of our attention when we have so many other things that need to be done here on the farm.

No matter what I wouldn't trade this life for anything else - we have a blessed life here at Windswept Farm!