First Pigs On The Farmstead

We got our three pigs from a local 4H high school gal who decided to bread her 2 female pigs. She had never done it before and was in it for the experience. She had two Mamas and rented out a male for the job. They ended up having 20+ pigs between the two moms. One mom’s babies where much bigger then the other mom’s due to being a few less pigs in the litter. So we came home with one “big” baby named Flo and two “little” babies named Fish and Fox.

It was fun to see how fast they grew and how much they loved food. You couldn't go out to the barn without them letting you know that they wanted food. They would snuggle up together to sleep, and even snored. Pigs are very smart, and honestly you could use the word clean too. I know it sounds crazy, but they slept in same spot all the time and used the bathroom in another.

These babies were born mid August and are ready to be butchered already. We are estimating their weight to be around 200lbs. This is something the kids knew was coming from day 1 when we got them. I am not sure if they will be sad about the fact that they are going to become meat in our freezer or if it will just be sad to not have these fun animals around the farm. (We will not even begin to talk about taking our cow, Gerty, to the locker. She was our son Urijah’s clover kid bottle calf project and that one might be a little harder on their hearts... and mine.)

Some fun filled memories:

Catching them to bring them home (and their protective Moms not liking to hear their babies squeal), Urijah getting covered with mud while trying to get out of the way, and bringing them home in the back of the suburban in a dog kennel.
We got them in August and our garden season was ending, so we tried to put an electric netting fence around the garden and used our old duck house as a hut for them. Well, one rainy day our electric fence just kept turning off and these babies kept getting out!! Catching pigs is no easy task. My husband’s choice was roping them. My choice was coaxing them with milk and other yummy dairy. I’ll let you guess which one worked best. Let’s just say this wasn't the only day that we had this issue...

Will we get pigs again? YES!!! Absolutely.

Two things we will do differently next time

Be more picky about the breed so we can free range them a bit more and feed them pasture.
Get babies at a different time of year so that we could utilize our garden a lot more to feed them.

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