Sunday, June 12, 2016

Hog harvest update

It has been a very busy week! After 3 full days of harvesting, the hog herd is down to just 11 breeders and 1 small boar. It seems surreal to reduce the herd so much so fast, but it did serve the purpose. Without any off farm income (see recent blog post) this provides us the income to keep going for a couple months. After that... I don't know yet but we shall see where things go.

The 11 breeders were kept so far because they were in various states of pregnancy. As time goes by, we want to weed out about half of these also.

Today we got quite a surprise! A good size litter arrived! Unfortunately with all the recent commotion, the sow didn't know what to do, and did not make it to "the birthing area". Some of the piglets got lost trying to escape the mid day heat. We did the best we could as soon as we discovered them, but a few didn't make it. Very sad.

Farms thrive on routine. These two weeks have been anything but routine, and that causes some difficulties and consequences. But this coming week things should get back to normal and settle in.

Stay tuned!

posted from Bloggeroid

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