Hot Off The Haywire

Forest For The Trees...

Sometimes things work their way into your conscience slowly, and sometimes they strike you like a bolt of lightning.

At the farm today, after feeding and watering all the pigs, I got my video cam out to get a glimpse of Twiggs and her new piglets. Twiggy farrowed in the same lot as Dottie, but I noticed something today that I saw when Dottie was in the same spot, but I really didn't notice it at all.

Maybell and Dottie are in the pasture with Jethro, as they were weaned recently, and while I was walking over to video Twiggs I noticed Jethro standing at the fence-line which is fairly close to Twiggy's ark. He was standing there listening to the piglets nursing while Maybell and Dottie were still eating. There's not many things that will take a pig away from it's feed, and I couldn't understand why Jethro wasn't eating.

I had noticed him standing along this same fence when Dottie was raising her pigs, but I never thought much about it. Now however, watching him just standing there, peering into the ark, I remembered that he does this with any of the females that farrow his piglets. Whether it's a protection instinct, or something else, to me it seemed he was looking after his own. He doesn't display this with another boar's litter. It struck me that I hadn't seen the forest for the trees.

I often joke about Jethro being dumber than a sack of rocks, etc, hence the name, but I really felt proud to have him on the farm, knowing that he spends all day standing and watching over his offspring. Maybe there's nothing too it, or maybe animals have a sense of family that we don't understand or haven't taken the time to investigate. Either way, Jethro's my buddy and will be with us a long time!

Here's the vid I took and you can see Jethro towards the end:

 

Thanks for reading and watching!

Pork & Greens

An Apple For Jethro

I arrived at the farm this morning to a pleasant surprise. Perk had farrowed 14 nice piglets. Twiggs farrowed the day before and had 11 or 12, but I couldn't get an accurate count because she wouldn't let me get near enough to them.

This was a much better result, more like we expect number wise, hence the apple for Jethro, the boar that bred both girls, reference. Here's a short vid I took of Perk's piglets this morning:

 

I'm going to try and video Twigg's piglets tomorrow. Geez and Myfoot's pigs are growing well. I turned them in an old bermuda field I frost seeded to clover. In this pic if you look close you can see the clover emerging:

 

This is a shot of the clover growing in the garden plot from last year. It's really looking good, and once it gets a foot or so high we'll turn the pigs in for some good grazing:

 

Farmers' market season is only 2 weeks away so we're spending a lot of time getting ready for that. The fire marshal met with the board of Cherry Street and said you can't have an open flame within 20 feet of a tent, so now I'll have to move the brat cart away from the booth. That means I won't be able to run the cart, as I need to be in front of the customers, so I'm looking for someone with a food handler's license that can grill for me. If any of y'all know of anyone that might be interested let me know.

Thanks for reading and watching!

Pork & Greens

Piglet Video

Busy, busy, busy. Too many irons in the fire right now, but I did take the time to get this short video of Geez and Myfoot's piglets after turning them out of their farrowing arks:

 

Nice and plump little pigs, a good sign that both girls are milking well. Perk and Twiggs are right around the corner, and I'm setting their farrowing pasture up so I can move them on Saturday. I'll write a more detailed post next week when things settle down a little. Hope you enjoy the video!

Pork & Greens

You Don't Want To Meet Your Maker, Your Sausage Maker That Is!

Good comes with bad, high comes with low, and keep comes with cull. On my type of farm the most crucial number that decides how well the business goes is the number of piglets born per sow, and second is the number of those piglets she can raise to weaning age. Without the piglets on the ground it doesn't matter how fast or slow they grow, or how much feed it's taking to get them to market size. They have to be there first, and then the other things can be looked at in kind.

Which brings us to the disappointing number of piglets that Myfoot farrowed. She's on her third litter and only farrowed 9 live piglets, and she smashed one of those. As you know, we target 11 live piglets per sow, the number we need to make our farm viable. Her sister Geez did farrow 11 nice piglets and hasn't lost any so far.

Myfoot has been a good sow up to date, but I'm back and forth with the decision of whether to keep her or cull her out of the sow herd. If she mashes another piglet then the decision will be pretty easy to make, but her piglets are 4 days old and generally are strong and alert enough to get out of the way at that age. I try and keep emotion out of business decisions, but I really like the old girl and don't want to seperate her from her sister. Oh, what's a farmer to do? I'll have to chew on it for a while and hopefully do the right thing for the farm.

Here's a short vid I took of both girl's litters this morning:

 

You might have noticed that they're farrowing in new looking metal arks. I had plans to build some new ones until I found out how proud the local lumberyard was of their products. It was going to cost me $1600.00 to build 2 new arks, plus the time I'd have to allocate to get them built. Luckily, I found two 6'x11' arks for a lot less money with the added benefit of me not having to build them.

Here's a shot of Myfoot's dissappointing number of piglets, although the piglets look really good:

 

I'll get some more shots of them when I take their hurrdles down and they're outside of the arks.

Market season is 5 weeks away, so we're busy with getting ready for that. The girl that ran my booth in Broken Arrow won't be able to do it again this year, so I've got another lady that's going to run it and the Tuesday market in downtown Tulsa. I'm thinking about getting a bigger trailer with a fold down ramp for the brat cart, and letting her use my current trailer. The winter market and Oklahoma Food Coop have been great for us this year, and we look forward to continuing our association with both. Thanks for reading, and we're looking forward to seeing a lot of faces we haven't seen since last fall!

Pork & Greens