First snow

Weatherman  says 2 - 5 " expected.

Last night got down to 14 degree's here.  They weren't sure if the snow would start late last night or this morning so I dutifully got up a few times in the night to be sure it wasn't snowing yet.   The barn doesn't have a center support in it yet and isn't able to handle a snow load so if it had been snowing I would have to go out occasionally and give it shake to get the snow off before it bent the cattle panels.   At 5 am I looked out and all the lights were out... no glow.  I wasn't sure what had gone wrong with the lights and really didn't feel like going out to check it out  but bundled up to go check anyway.   I checked the thermometer on the front porch first and it was indeed still 14 degrees.  The outlet from Premier is suppose to come on at 35 and turn off at 45 so at 14 degrees outside my mind said it certainly should have been on still inside their little barn.  Just as I was heading out the door all unhappily bundled up the heat lamps came back on.  The outlet was working fine.  It was just that warm in there.    I really love those Premier heat lamps.   Needless to say no one comes out much.  Just a head now and again to see if it's still snowing.   And as a bonus, no frozen waters.   Still no baby pigs though.

Elizabeth

Keeping everyone warm

It's rather surreal looking out at night to see this golden dome in the yard.    I purchased 4 heat lamps from Premier 1 this year.  There are 2 inside there being used now with 250 watt bulbs.   We have piglets due and it's been so cold I hooked them up for the first time.  I keep them on the pigs side so the ever so curious goats can't get a hold of them.  Many of you have seen these heat lamps, I am sure,  in the Premier catalog but I have to say until you've seen them in person the catalog just doesn't do them justice.   I was taken aback when they arrived by the sheer size of them.  Very substantial and well made.  It took me a bit of time to figure out how to open them to put the bulb in.  They seem to have thought of everything when making them and they are about as animal proof as any heat lamp could be.   I would never put a regular heat lamp out like this but these seem pretty safe.

I have been using them with a thermostatically controlled plug that turns them on when the temperature drops to 35 degree's and off when it gets up to 45 degree's.   It works wonderfully.  With the reflective insulation on the sides of the structure too it stays fairly warm inside considering how cold it's been. 

Although it's been in the 20's a night the goats spend part of the night outside and if they are inside one of them usually is in the doorway with her head out.   The pigs rarely leave the little cattle panel barn these days. 

I also borrow the high / low thermometer I use in my incubutor at this time of year just to get an idea of how cold it is in their little home at night.

Elizabeth

A Barn

This is what we have been working on this weekend.   It's really quite spacious for a cattle panel structure.  It's 10' wide, 9'high and 16' deep.  It's divided in 2 on the inside and can be closed up to keep the animals inside if need be.  The sides are insulated mostly for protection from wind chill but it also helps hold temperatures up too.  It stays about 10 degree's warmer than outside at this point.  Sometimes cattle panel structures covered with plastic can have a condensation problem but were not having a problem with this.

I'm making clips to replace all the alligator clips. 

I've taken a bunch of pictures of it as it went up and of the inside and will post completely how we did it when I finish it.  There is much more I want to do to it  but it could stay as is for the winter and be a fine shelter with no additions to it.  It's nice having the pigs in the back which opens to their own fenced area in the back and the goats in the front opening into their own area but they are sharing body heat and it's one location for us to care for all rather than 2.    We already have a base of 8 -18" of hay in there.   The variance is due to the slope it's on.  I want to add a small raised area in there for the chickens too.

More later about it.  I do love those cattle panels!

Elizabeth

Pigs, Pigs, Pigs

We've been having a problem for the last month with the pigs escaping.   And it's been getting progressively worse daily.   We are using hog, goat and combination panels to keep them in a wooded area about 75' x 75'.   We've used panels since we got the pigs without a problem until this past month when the piglets realized they could get under them in places.   Then the adults started following suit.   We used logs against the fence at first without much success.  Then we started hanging cinder blocks.  That worked better but only for a while. 

It seemed they really wanted to get to the acorns so we collected them and threw them in.  Then we tried feeding them earlier in the morning.  Then we tried feeding them more.  Finally we decided we just needed to move the whole thing and reinforce it all with rebar attached to the panels to hold them down.  That would make it more work to move it so we would make it small and move it frequently to new ground for them to forage. 

A few days ago we hauled the hog panels up from the other location and my helper here started pounding in rebar.  That bright smile was,  in part,  in anticipation of actually being able to contain the pigs again and  not have to chase and herd pigs twice daily any more.

All settled in their decided smaller digs.   Yaaaa!  There are tons of acorns in there with them.  It's right under a large oak.  And given that it is such a small area they would only be here a few days.

Flash forward to the next morning.  The dogs woke me barking at the pigs that were no longer in their pen but had broken out yet again.   Malia's out in the rain helping to reinforce the pen.  We got them back in and they were out again within a half hour.   OK.... I get it.  We absolutely need electric fencing or at the very least a strand low.   I'm working on it.

Bliss

That is sooo good

Ya, right there.   That's the spot

Awwwww..... just don't stop

Hey.... what about me?  I want some too!

Thank you.

Hey Pa,  how come they get all the good stuff and we just get treated like we're...... I don't know....like we're a couple of pigs or something?  

I don't know son, that's just our lot in life I guess.

Cool mornings = thoughts of winter feedings

Blue Hubbard Squashes

The Blue Hubbard's I fretted over so much this summer are loaded with squashes.  More than I will use for the 2 of us for sure.  I also planted Jarradale pumpkins and Butternut squashes in the same area so everything could just vine out and mix  together without shading out less aggressive plants.  Anything we don't use can certainly be used as food for the goats, pigs and chickens over the winter.

 

A blue Jarradale pumpkin and a volunteer melon in back.  The melon plant, one  orange pumpkin plant and a tomato plant were volunteers from things we fed to the pigs over the winter, who were housed here.  Either the seeds passed through their system undigested or they weren't eaten and just laid dormant till this spring.

With the mornings getting a bit cooler it seems the foliage in this patch of squashes and pumpkins is starting to die back just a bit in the center and you can see ground where you couldn't a month ago.    My intent is to put the pigs back in there after I've harvested everything we humans can use and let them go to it at that point.   To maximize the amount of food  for them I sowed some Purple Top Turnips in there a few days ago.   I just threw seed througout the enter patch.  As the big leaves of the squashes die back the turnips will take over.  I don't think the plants will actually make the turnip bulbs because the soil is too hard in places there but still the abundant foliage will be a welcome addition to their diet. 

Turnip seedling planted Mon. already spouting amongst the pumpkins and squashes.   A bag of seeds from my local hardware store of common Purple Top Turnips was under $3 for a 4 ounce bag.   Some will get stepped on and trampled as I harvest in there but almost anything I get will make the tiny effort of scattering seeds worth the effort.   If you do it just before it rains you don't even have to water them in.   Mother nature can do that for you.

                                    

Turnips I sowed last summer growing throughout the pumpkin and squash plants this year.  

 

The barren area of this bed was planted this week with collard greens and kale for the goats for some much appreciated greens for winter feeding.  They love both.  The collards provide large leaves which means extra bang for the buck and the kale should stay going all winter so even in the coldest weather they will get the occasional addition of greens to their meals.   The bed looks smaller in this photo than it is.  I think it's about a 15' x 15'  area.

Who knew lawn clippings could be such a treat?

It almost makes mowing pleasurable knowing these guys all enjoy this treat so much.

Me???

I'll take that ripe juicy tomato I picked today.

So, whatcha been up to? or a day on the homestead

Morning cart loaded with food and milking equipment for the for the goats and food and dishes for the pigs.  

So whatcha been up to?   Nothin much....  Same thing as everyday.   That's my answer to that question.  It's a question much like the one I get from my family in the mid west...."When you coming to see us?"   Ahhh.... probably not anytime soon guys.  Maybe you could come see me????   Usually -  not always -  but usually, when I get asked those questions it's as if  the person asking is waving a red flag that says they have absolutely no understanding what our life is like.  You can tell them and on a intellectual level they may get it but at gut level they really don't.  

We have a small kennel.  We raise and occasionally show Tibetan Terriers.  We used to show the dogs more but when you have a lot of animals it is hard to go anywhere.  Then, because we were limited in being able to leave anyway, I decided why not get those goat's I had always wanted.  I had been hesitant to get goats because of the twice a day milking and how that would really tie us to the house but what the heck we already were tied down because of the dogs.   After a couple of years with the goats the decision was made to get the pigs my 10 year old wanted to help use the milk and produce some of our own meat.   Now we are at a point that getting to the feed store is an event.   Add the garden and all it's chores to that and home has become a lifestyle called homesteading.  

 I have to check in with myself on occasion to see why the heck I'm doing this,  like on the day we moved all those cattle and goat panels when it was 100 degree's out.   Or tonight, when after doing all the day's chores and fitting in a trip to the feed store, I get home in time to get ready for the evening chores but realize, it's gonna rain tonight and momma pig hasn''t got that litter of piglets out of the woods yet and up to the pig house so I need to figure out how to either move them or somehow keep them dry where they lie.   I decided to haul a 9' picnic umbrella and heavy duty stand and some hay out to the woods to keep them covered and up somewhat off the ground on the hay.   We'll see.   Then I get to start the nights chores which are an abbreviated version of the morning chores.  

Load the cart, haul it to the goat area, tether the goats  so they don't eat each others food,  

Check out the udder on Tina (on the right).  That's about a gallon of milk in there.   With her two kids gone this week to their new home it's all ours...oh yeah, and the pigs.

Goats sweet feed mix with extra corn, sunflower seeds for extra protein and  2 overgrown summer squashes cut up in it - Yummy!

Now on to the pigs.  They hear the yellow wagon and me feeding the goats and know their next...momma even left her babies in the woods to come wait at the fence.   I throw them some hay over the fence first to distract them so I can get the food in there.  They don't always take the bait though.

Pig bucket... soaked corn, pig pellets with sunflower seeds, summer squash and milk.  Now the trick is to get it into their enclosure.  Yikes!  Let the squealing begin!  I  ALWAYS wear my knee high Welly's for this job. 

The adults don't look much better.   What little pigs they are about their food!   And isn't that Tina and Passion I hear letting me know they are done eating...come untether them?   I need to milk anyway now that all have been fed.

Let see, do I have everything?  Udderly easy milker and it's inserts, wipes to clean her, udder spray for when I'm done, insect repellent for her, a Pepsi for me,  milking bucket and my stool.   Oh and I better check baking soda before I leave and I think I'll do her hooves while I"m here.  Most goats can go 3 - 6 months on hooves but not my Tina. 

These were done at kidding time.   The kids are 10 weeks old now.   Should have done them a month ago.

OK,  that's better.  Not perfect but I'll do a little more tomorrow.   Now I need to go do the kennels, check the gardens, pick up the house, get some food on before I go to the the feed store so I can get home in time for evening chores.  

And I love it and  am so very very grateful that I have this as my life.  

Well it's getting light out now so I think I'll go see how those baby pigs made out last night in the woods.

There here!

Thyme went off into the woods early this morning and had 6 baby piglets.

3 gilts and 3 boars

Luckily for one litte piglet a childs eyes spotted it about 75' from it's mother off in the woods.   How it got separated we'll never know but it was reunited with it's mama. 

Less than an hour old.

Any time now

Thyme looks as if she's about to touch the ground her belly is getting so big.

We've spent the past 2 days hauling cattle panels and goat panels through the woods to give the pigs and goats new wooded area's to browse and root.  Exhausting work with temperatures in the high 90's and low 100's.   What was I think when I decided to do this project now? 

Anyway, it's an area that's never been open to the animals and rarely have we even walked in that area.  We had to snake our way through the tree's, over downed wood and poison ivy carrying them one by one and then holding them up till we could get them attatched to the one before.  I'm sure in the next few weeks we'll have at least a few spots of poison ivy on us.   I think we went through a bag full of banana flavored popsicles in the process trying to cool off.  We have a rule to never venture into the woods without our Wellie's on because we have on occasion spotted copperheads back there so that added rubber -to -the- knee's only made us even hotter.

Cattle panels for anyone not familiar with them are 16' long pieces of metal fencing 4' tall.   The goat panels are the same but much heavier because for goats the holes are 4" x 4" and the cattle panels have 6" holes meaning less wire.    They are great for temporary fencing that is fairly easily moved.   In grassy area's it's not too bad a job but hauling them through thick wooded area's is a job.  We had enough to do about an acre.  We used both the types of panels together to make one big area the pigs and goats can share.  The baby pigs can get through either fencing easily right now but have no intention of being away from their momma so aren't going to go anywhere.   When they start to deplete it we'll move it again to new ground.  It keeps the worm load down on both goats and pigs and keeps them in fresh greens while allowing the previous area to recuperated before it's destroyed.    

Last year we would take the goats for walks in the woods so they could eat the browse.   Or we would cut and bring it to them weaving the long branches into the fencing for them to eat.  It will be nice having them get their own this year.

                             

                             

Where Rosemary goes her babies follow.  We took these yesterday just before putting them in their new wooded area.  They are getting big fast.  It's cooler in the woods for them and they have a great wallow back there to laze the days away in when not out exploring and foraging.

A pig tilled garden

Our front yard, planted, after our American Guinea hogs tilled up the grass for us over the winter

Last fall when we got our trio of hogs we put hog panels up in the front yard where there was grass we wanted gone, added a small shelter for them inside and let them go to it.  We moved them this spring to a new pen in the back wooded area of our property and planted the front.  Right now it's rapidly filling up with pumpkins, squash and beans.  Later this month I'll put in a fall crop of turnips in to supplement the pigs and goats food this winter in any spots that are still bare.  An added benefit of has been a few volunteers we got from the scraps we gave the pigs over the winter in there.  It's like a little present each time a veggie plant pops up you didn't plant.  And you can always just pull it up and feed it to the pigs or goats if you don't want it there.  We got a pumpkin, a cantaloupe and tomoto plant as voluteers this year.

The plan is to move them back there again this winter to re-till it again as well as to clean up all the vegetation from this years garden.

A volunteer pumpkin

American Guinea Hog babies!

I love AGH's! I love that they are so easy and so smart.   2 of our new piglets, 2 days old, with their papa.

 We are still pretty new to pigs and 2 weeks ago we didn't even know piglets were coming.  I hear that's common in this breed if the females are housed with a boar.   One day you look out and see the mother pigs teats enlarging and soon after you have a litter of adorable little piglets running around.   I had thought that my 2 gilts (females that have never had piglets before) were overweight and would need to be slimmed down before they would be able to have babies.  If a gilt or sow gets overweight the fat around their ovaries can sometimes interfere with their abiity to concieve.  Not only was Rosemary able to concieve, her sister, Thyme, is expecting too.  Rosemary gave us 3 little boars and 2 little gilts.

AGH's are smaller pigs often mistaken for pot belly pigs because they too have a bit of a pot belly.   AGH's size is wonderful  for homesteads like mine without much land.  They are a favorite in many zoo's childrens petting area's because they are so friendly.  They love to graze and only root when everything they can graze is gone.  I leave them in my fenced backyard many nights to graze on my grass.  They go back in their pen in the woods behind our yard during the day.  I think it's cooler back there for them amongst the tree's and their wallow is back there too.  They spend a lot of their days in cooling off in that wallow. 

The other 3 babies sleeping in their house

We gave Rosemary plenty of space and were very resectful of her the morning we found she had had her babies. We co-house her with her sister and the boar,  Basil, but wanted to make sure she could have the house to herself in case it rained so made an quick shelter for the other 2.  It did rain that nigh, they did use it and now she's out with all the piglets in tow using it as well.  Coming from a dog backround rather than farm animals, I was surprised she was so OK with them and us being with her babies so soon.  She came out the second day followed by all her babies, laid down and rolled over to be scratched while nursing.  She clearly trusts us. 

Even more surprising to me was  how patient and gentle the boar was with the piglets when they got a bit confused and attempted to get him to nurse them.  He just rolled over and let them till they gave up.

 

Got milk????  No kids, Papa's do not have milk.

The hogs were initially purchased as weanlings because my 10 y.o. wanted pigs and since then she has been responsible for much of their day to day care.  Growing up with her as their primary care giver they've enjoyed much attention and become very people friendly.

.

                                                  

Momma in the foreground with Papa back by the wallow.   Our 2 females are short nosed and our boar is long nosed.  Some short nosed AGH tend to put on weight easier than the long nosed hog do so I'm told.   It's certainly true in this family.  I can already see difference in the noses of some of the piglets.

A very pregnant Thyme is enjoying getting cooled off in her wallow

We are members of the AGHA and encourage you to visit their site or the ALBCA site if your interested in more info about  American Guinea Hogs. 

American Guinea Association

The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy

The AGHA is in the process of updating their site so check back with them again too as their new site promises to be even more informative.

Moving day for the pigs

Guinea hogs grazing out back

After having the pigs in the front yard for the past few months it was an exciting day for all of us to get them moved out back.  They certainly did their job out front rototilling the new garden area but it was time for them to fade into the background a bit.  I think they enjoyed the move as much as I did.   I have to say I found myself over explaining the pigs in the front yard thing.   One moment I felt like this enlightened, environmentally responsible person and the next like I was this ridiculous person straight out of that silly sitcom Green Acres sans the denim overalls.   So with all that ambiguity going on in my head about pigs in the front yard it's a good thing  they aren't there anymore. 

I am moving them into the wooded area at the back of my property but they can also have limited access to the grassy area between the woods and the house now which is where they were today.  I had heard they weren't really rooters but they did quite a good job of rooting out front  for me.   But in the larger area of grass today they never rooted at all which is great because I didn't want that area torn up.   They just grazed .   I must say I enjoy having the pigs much more than I ever thought I would.  They are so friendly and I love the idea that even my weeds don't go to waste anymore.  And their size couldn't be anymore perfect for my little property.