Our original plan was to only do 2 types of animals our first year of living at our new home, Goats and Chickens. Since everything is going so well and we feel we have the goats and chickens under control we have decided to go ahead and add the piglets now.
We thought it would be good to try to raise them over the winter to help cut down on the smell. So I found someone on the Internet who was selling piglets.
We went Sunday and picked them up and brought them home. The breed is half Duroc and then half Hampshire -Yorkshire cross. It is suppose to be a good cross for meat.
Porkers -boy (l) and Catherine -girl (r)
We were suppose to get 2 girls but when we got home and took them out of the crate one ended up being a boy. It's okay though since we will not be keeping them for breeding. We let them explore their new area and they are both doing very well. They have found and have started drinking water and eating. Jamie fed them their grain this morning but we added some of Priscilla's milk to it and they loved it!! Besides their grain, we will be feeding them oats, goat's milk, fresh cooked eggs from our hens and any left over veggies we have or buy for them. They love to sleep in the pile of hay and cover themselves up with it to keep warm. They also only go to the bathroom in one area which will make clean up very easy.
Boy (l) and Girl (r)
As I have said before any animals we have here are for a purpose. The piglets purpose are for meat and feeding our family. It will take approximately 5 months to grow them to the ideal weight of 250lbs. Once they reach the right weight they will be brought to the slaughter house and they will butcher them for us. After dropping them off you go back in a week or two and pick up all your cuts of meat wrapped nicely like you see in the store. If we grow them to 250lbs we will get approximately 175lbs of meat. Since we only have a family of 4 and have 2 piglets we asked our friends the Campbell's in NH if they would like to go in with us and we would raise the other pig for them here. Once the butchering is done half of all the meat will go to them for their family.
They are doing well so far and I'll be sure to update the blog with their progress in the future.
Super-cute piggies! They'll make good bacon too, yum. I found your blog through a post on Hobby Farms, I'm a dairy farmer just a big further north than you (IN), but Husband and I recently made a trip to TN and I gotta say that if I lived anywhere else, it'd have to be TN!
ReplyDeleteThanks, the piglets are doing great!! :). We love TN so far. It's great to be able to see all this undeveloped land. Coming from Eastern MA its a rare thing up there now a days. Check back to read the blog if you'd like. I love getting others input.
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