Precious Piglet Videos

Here are a couple of videos of the little cuties.  Enjoy!

First a photo:

Then videos:

Ooops. Sex Change.

When the piglets were born, I didn't want to mess with them too much because it was sooooo cold and I didn't want mama pig to get upset and get up and leave them chilled.  So, what I thought, on cursory inspection, were two boars, I found upon closer inspection, (meaning I scratched their backs and they rolled over for their bellies to be rubbed) to be a boar and a gilt.  

The boar is mostly black and white with some orange splashes.  The gilt is mostly orange with some black spots.  Either one of these will be available for sale in six weeks.  

Photos to follow!  

I'm trying to get the links (in red) above working.  My computer skills are fair at best and I hope to have them linking to the proper pages before too long!

First Bee Sting And "Fern" Update (Cute Video Alert!)

Its ironic.  Two days ago I worked in a cloud of bees as I transferred nucs to their new hives.  Not one single bee sting.  This morning, I'm pulling weeds in the high tunnel and I can hear the bee coming towards me.  I can tell by the high pitched, angry whine of it's flight that it is on a suicide mission.  The bee laps me once and starts zinging around closely to pick it's stinging spot.  Silly me, I start to run!  I know I can't outrun a bee.  But I had hope.  The bee chose my head to sting and I could hear it in my hair and I could feel it burrowing down to my scalp so I started hitting at my own head in attempt to kill it before it get to me.  No luck.  The bee made it to my scalp and stung me in the back of the head before I could hit it.  I'm writing with a burning goose egg on the back of my head and welts from hives  (I'm mildly allergic) here and there on my body.

The husband moved hives to our Odin location today and a few bees must have been left behind and they are up-set.  I think I'll work inside and around the front of the house until later on today!    

Fern, the single piglet is doing well.  Here is a video of the little cutey.  I dare you not to say "awww" as you watch it.   

Aren't the wattles on her neck interesting?  They come from the kune kune part of her heritage.  She'll grow into them like her mother. 

The Pigs Are Enjoying Their Pig Pen

After our horrible pig chase, we got the pigs in a small enclosed area inside their pig house.  When they stopped being so terribly skittish we took the boards off and gave them a very small fenced in area with three rows of fencing around it (no more pig chases!)  

The inside row was an electric fence.  Outside that there was a double row of mesh fencing with concrete blocks at the bottom of the mesh.  The pigs quickly learned that the electric fence "bites"!  

After a few days of learning to "respect the electric fence" (they let out a half yelp, half squeal when they touch it with their nose - a squelp?), we let them loose into their larger enclosure.  You can see the electric fence in the background of the first picture.  They were quite jumpy, but after they made a few heart stopping runs (my heart, not theirs) towards the fence - then they slammed on the brakes - they settled down and began very, very happily rooting.  Every batch of pigs is different, and this is a batch of rooters!

Chasing A Pig

We got this year's batch of four piglets on Monday.  I've been too exhausted to write about our harrowing day!

We dropped the first piglet in the pen.  It hit the fence... and kept on going!  It ran into the forest behind our house and so began a three and a half hour pig chase.  

We put up a push-in fence along the road and herded the pig into it in an attempt to slow it down so we could jump on the pig and catch it.  It hit the fence turned sideways and ran around it.  After that, it knew that fence was there and wouldn't go in that direction.

We found that piglets never tire out.  My husband, four children, and I chased that pig until we could hardly move and it never got tired!  It would lay down for a second while we all tried to herd it, but then up and away it went.  We tried hiding and catching the pig as it ran past.  We tried closing in on it in a circle.  It's much easier for a little pig to slide through the forest than a big vertical human!  

After hour number two we started thinking, "roast suckling pig."

Finally, in an opening in the forest, we made a "C" shaped fence enclosure and doubled the fencing.  The children herded the pig into the enclosure.  It ran in at top speed!  The piglet hit the back end of the enclosure, got hung up for a second, frantically backed out and turned sideways, hit that fence, and my husband jumped on it and grabbed its legs!  It screamed bloody murder.  Oh my, did we cheer and dance!  

Now, we've put the piglets in a high, solid board enclosed area for a few days until they calm down.  As they get accustomed to their new home they'll gradually get a little more freedom.

The lessons never stop coming!

New Pig Watering System

For weeks and weeks I have hauled buckets of water down to the pig pen and poured them into a giant-sized dog dish looking thing - only to watch the pigs take a big drink, lie down in the dish, and then tip the whole thing over and wallow in the resulting mud.  It's pretty funny to watch them flop themselves down and wallow around - but then a little while later they're squealing for water and it's exhausting to have to keep hauling it to them!

I don't want to take credit for this pig watering system idea.  Maybe it's been around and I've never heard about it.  But, I read about in in one of my favorite magazines - either Mother Earth News or Countryside - and adapted it to what we have available.

To create this, I got a 1/2-inch pig nipple waterer at Tractor Supply Company and a water barrel at Worth W. Smith Hardware in Olean.  I found that the water barrels sold locally tended to have been used to store toxic fracking chemicals, while the Worth W. Smith ones had been used to store cappuccino mix.  Guess which one I would rather use for the pig I'll be eating next winter?

Pig nipple waterer

The design is like a giant-sized rabbit water bottle.  Fitz cut a half moon out of the top of the water barrel so that he could reach down into it, then drilled a hole near the bottom of the barrel and inserted the nipple waterer valve.  Rubber gaskets on the inside and outside of the drinker keep it from leaking and a nuts hold it all in place.  He put screen over the hole he had cut out so that insects can't get into it and it was ready to go.

We attached it to a fence post so that the pigs, as they grow larger, won't push against it and knock it over.  After the pigs came to look at it they took about one second to figure out how to use it.  They walked up, bit the valve down, water went into their mouth, and that was it.  You can see from the water underneath, they have figured out how hold down the valve so that it drips onto the ground and they can create a wallowing hole.  They're not dripping too much and the little bit of mud makes them much more comfortable so I'm happy to let it go.

Don't forget to Barn Hop over to Homestead Revival!

Piggies On The Loose

The piglets jumped the fence yesterday.

I was at my daughter's track meet in Smethport (about 45 minutes away) and called my son, who was at home with my mother, to tell him to put more hay in the corner of the piglet's shelter.  The temperature had dropped by ten degrees and it was promising to be a very chilly night and I wanted the piggies to have a little extra hay to dig down into.

A few minutes later my son called me to tell me the piglets were out!  He was just putting in the hay and they jumped the fence, he said.  Somehow, I'm a little bit skeptical that they "just jumped the fence."  Sometimes, I think, the combination of 10-year-old boy and skittish piglets that might need to be held or petted can create a situation.  How can a boy resist when the cute factor of baby pigs is so high?

I jumped in the car and drove home as quickly as I could (my daughter was taking the team bus home).  The whole way home I had visions of the piglets getting into the forest and running loose to become coyote dinner.

When I arrived, my mother and John were in the yard calmly following around the piglets and keeping them away from the forest.  They took the very best course of action they could have.  I called the piglets  and they started coming my way - they know who feeds them!

We were able, with the help of some pig feed, a friend's help, and gentle coaxing, to get them into their pen.  Today I'll adjust the fences so there's a smaller gap between the wires and they can't get through it too easily.  Disaster averted!


“"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet. 
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
"It's the same thing," he said.”
                                           ~A. A. Milne

Pooped Piggies

A Pile of Pooped Out Piggies

Piglets 2011

The piglets arrived last night!  They started eating almost immediately and this morning they were crashed out on a big pile of hay.

A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and not by a but.

~John Berger

The Happiest Pigs in France

Isn't it sad state of affairs when raising pigs in a decent environment is NEWS? 

(Follow this link)  The Happiest Pigs in France

Last year we raised pigs for the first time.

We named them Ham and Lucky, but as they got older we couldn't tell which was which.  For their living area, we fenced about a quarter of an acre of  a field that contained some small trees (they pretty much decimated the trees) so they could run around.  Pigs love to run around if they have the chance - and they're fast!  They had a run-in shelter to go into to get out of the rain and they had a big bed of straw to sleep in there at night.  We fed them a good pig feed with no funky additives (I checked the label and researched all the science-eeze) and we gave them lots and lots of vegetables.

They lived a very healthy life before they left for freezer camp.

Pigs eating tomatoes.

Pigs eating corn.

The chickens get in with the pigs and try to steal food.  

Pigs eating their feed.  Their rooting noses turned this area into a sloppy mess, but they love wallowing around in it!

Although I grow lots and lots of wonderful vegetables, I just couldn't resist this quote(!):  

Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.  ~Doug Larson