Pigs and a Goat

Pigs and a Goat

Spring is always a busy time of year for farmers, but I may have made it a tad busier this year. 

First, I talked Pippa and Pap Pap into buying maple tree taps so that we could tap the maple trees in their yard. We tapped five maple trees and tried to get an understanding of how it all worked. 

In theory, it's very simple. You tap the trees, collect the sap every day and store it in the fridge, then boil it down once a week to make sap. We boiled outside on the propane stove to avoid getting sticky water vapor all over the house then moved it to a smaller pot once it reached around 215*F. 

Then it's just a matter of waiting for the temperature to reach 219*F. Once it does, pour it through a filter and into a jar. Done! In reality, we had some problem with sugar crystals forming due to not filtering it enough. There's supposed to be three stages of filtering, and we only did two. It's still really tasty, and we are excited to try and get the taps out earlier next year to get a larger harvest!

Then, I talked Pap Pap and Pippa into helping us purchase a couple pigs to start a meat herd. I promised them a baby or two out of the liter that we would raise and butcher for them. We decided to go with the Kunekune (pronounced kooney kooney) Heritage breed because of their docile nature, small stature, and that they don't test fences or root the ground. 

Meet Rosie, the female. She was about ~250 lbs and a year old when we bought her. The owners fed her about 2.5x what she was supposed to eat every day. She's FAT!

Oscar by comparison, was 6 months old and only about 80lbs when we bought him. He came with a pedigree even though he hasn't been officially registered. We may consider registering him in the future. 

We thought he had fertilized Rosie about a week after getting the both of them, but then she went into heat three weeks after that. 

At this point, he was living in the turkey and rooster pen, so we had to take a trip over to see the girls. Too bad he was scared of them and kept running away! I'm fully expecting to have to take him back in a couple weeks to visit Rosie. 

The reason we had to move Oscar to the rooster and turkey pen is that I convinced Sam to buy TWO MORE pigs. We found a listing for Meishan Heritage pigs--two gilts for $300, and one of them was already pregnant. Like the Kunekune, this breed is supposed to be super docile, not test fences, and minimally root, and are lard breeds meaning we will get a good source of lard during butchering and beautifully marbled bacon. Unlike the Kunekunes, Meishan's are listed as Critically Endangered by the livestock conservancy agency in 2018 and are highly sought after in Asia for their delectable meat. 

We had to move Oscar because the little gilt was 3 months old, and this breed becomes fertile at 3-4 months of age. Another upside of this breed is that after the sow is three years old, she will have liter sizes of 15-20 instead of 6-12. They are supposedly wonderful mothers in addition to being the most prolific heritage breed. 

Our experience with the Meishan breed has been anything but expected. They are so much louder than the Kunekunes and Moana, here, loves to root. She does nothing but tear up the ground ALL DAY. Time and time again we read that they were supposed to be one of the least impactful pig breeds on the environment. We also read, though, that if they are underfed, they tend to root. We definitely believe that these two came to us underfed. 

Maribel here is loud and aggressive. She will violently jump and ram against any gate or door that is separating her from the food you are bringing up to her and will bite your shoes if you aren't fast enough at getting it to her. Compared to the kunekunes whom we feel completely comfortable with going into their pen everyday with the kids to feed and even letting the kids help us, this is a VERY undesirable trait. 

We have prepped the barn stall as a farrowing pen for her to give birth, and are anxiously awaiting her to have babies. She was run with a boar from November until mid-February, so she should be pregnant, but we have seen no signs yet. Pigs don't show until about 3 weeks before birthing (at the maximum). 

We've already purchased all the medication, shots, and supplies needed for the baby piglets once they are born. From there, they will live with their mom for 8 weeks in the farrowing pen (pictured above) until they are weaned. We plan on selling all the babies and eating Maribel shortly after. Meishan's reach the 200-250 ideal butcher weight at about 10-12 months old. 

We also plan on selling Moana (the younger Meishan gilt) and just sticking with Kunekunes on our farm for now. Moana and Rosie live with the goats in the front field for now. We modified the goat house that we built last year out of doors to be a four wall structure the goats and pigs can sleep in to get out of cold weather. It's worked really well so far. We just have to move it every so often to avoid the mud building up inside. 

Last year we purchased a moveable electric netting fence that would allow us to rotationally graze the animals. We originally purchased it for the goats. You can see from the picture below that the goats are doing their job. All the green in the brush is from parts of the brush that the goats can't reach. They've chomped everything else. 

Speaking of the goats, we've been waiting for them to reach 45 pounds so that we could breed them. The lady we purchased Oscar from rents out her Nigerian Dwarf bucks for $75-$150 depending on which buck you choose. When we found an adorable buck that was supposedly nice for only $150, I couldn't exactly say no. It would mean not having to drive to Bagdad twice this spring and pay someone else $150 (for their ugliest goat) only to have to turn around next year and pay again. We named him Bruno. 

He is stinky and annoying, and if he wasn't going to give us cute babies, I would totally not have him. I've been telling Sam for forever that I never wanted a buck because of all the problems I knew they brought. We plan on putting him in a pen behind the barn so that he can't bother the girls, and only bringing them around when they are ready to breed. I'm pretty sure that Una was successfully impregnated, we are just waiting to see if Annie goes back into heat in a couple weeks. 

As a sidenote, we tried to cover his horns with pool noodles to make him safer for the other animals in his pen (and us), but he got out of them super quick. We are waiting for his new horn covers to come in the mail. He's a booty head and likes to push everyone...including Oscar when he's dead asleep in the middle of the yard. 

We updated the turkey coop to include a nesting box for the turkey hen. It took her forever to start laying, but we finally got our first egg this past week! 

We have gotten two eggs so far. One of them was cracked because the silly head insists on laying in the middle of the yard instead of her nice nesting box. 

We plan on incubating the turkey eggs and eating the hatchlings for Thanksgiving! We've read that you can incubate turkey eggs at the same time as chicken eggs if you put them in a week earlier. 

The chickens we also had to prep for breeding this year. Knowing the tarp would not likely last through the winter, we took it down and waited for temperatures to warm. A few days after I put it up, a wind storm shredding the tarp. 

It took hours of scouring the internet to find an alternative that wasn't going to cost $150-$400. We opted for a patio covering. Not completely water proof, but enough to keep the chickens mostly dry and provide them with shade. It's not a permanent living structure, so we were fine with that. 

Since outdoor temperatures were still below freezing at night when we wanted to start incubating chicks, we moved all of the roosters to the rooster pen EXCEPT the roosters breeds that would have a colored egg gene. The result, all the eggs we harvested from the flock would yield Easter Egg green to Olive green eggs. 

We put 48 in the incubator, 4 of them were not fertilized, and 19 of them hatched. Lower than a 55% hatch rate is considered low, so we are already planning on making some adjustments with the help of Sam's new 3D printer to improve the hatch rates. 

This time around we are breeding silver and gold laced wyandottes, as well as blue laced black wyandottes, red ameraucanas, and splash easter eggers. Since we only have two breeding coops (the cuddle coop bit the dust), the kids and I scrambled together a third breeding coop. She's been in there for about two days and has yet to lay, so I'm giving her a few more days before I give up this round. 

Property wise, Sam and the kids moved some gravel to the back walk way to try and cut down on all the mud and flooding. 

We've also been trying to do a little burning here and there to clean up--especially around the garden area. 

The kids and I planted a spring garden to start indoors and really wanted a small patch of garden this year to farm from. 

In addition, Daniel and Kelcey Crossfield generously gave us ten asparagus plants from their excess, and we needed a place to put them. For now, the kids and I put together a makeshift garden bed. 

Sam bought a new PTO shaft for the tiller that came with our tractor and finally got it working. We killed the majority of the grass up at the garden using a giant black tarp (that decomposed and is now strewn all over the field, sigh). So Sam tilled a strip just deep enough to pull up the surface grass. 

We then headed over to Whinny the Poo in Versailles and purchased three scoops of compost for $90 (she gave us a deal for $75!) and covered the strip with 6-8 inches of beautifully dark compost. 

That same day, we purchased 9 250 gallon water tanks to capture rain water from the barn gutter system to be able to water all the farm animals around the barn with. We got them for the wonderful price of only $35 each!

Last but not least, we prepped and hung two swarm boxes around the property to try and catch wild bee swarms this spring. We are hoping to get back into bees this year but with everything else going on if it doesn't happen, we will just try again next year. 

In the meantime, we are using what beeswax we have left to make chapstick. My cousin Matthew will actually be using our chapstick as a fundraiser for his Highschool FFA. 

Family wise, the kids are growing like weeds. 

Will Will is learning his colors and can now sort all the colors. 

He's also somewhat trying to potty train. 

He will come up to me all the time and say "butt" meaning he has to poop or has already pooped, and today he even said "butt poop". He's pooped on the potty several times by himself now, although he has a funny idea of how it's supposed to work since he's used to pooping standing up. 

The other night, he didn't quite make it and ended up bringing me this surprise a few minutes later when I was doing school work. He knew it didn't go on the floor, but he wasn't sure what to do with it.

We've been spending more and more time outdoors, giving the kids plenty of time to play and explore. They love being outside just as much as I do. 

Rylee is quickly chugging away at learning "baby letters" (lower case letters). We've started incorporating their sounds this past week to prep her for reading. I can't wait! 

And...drumroll....she learning to do puzzles all by herself! It started with a twelve-piece puzzle, then a 24, and she's even done a 40 piece puzzle by herself! She prefers for us to watch her, and sometimes needs some encouragement to continue because she is easy to give-up, but it's a good lesson in perseverance and pattern matching. We are so proud!

Pax Domini cum spirito tuo temper sit,

Torey, Sam, Rylee & William

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