We've had a lot of fun with animals this year. I really love the set-up of our yard. We have just shy of an acre, but it's set up really well. We have our chicken coop/dog run, a pig pen in one of the stalls in the barn, and two other stalls to keep stuff in along with all of our pasture. Plus, up until the last week, we've had another half acre of pasture that we could use. It really worked well this year. We started out the year getting pigs. We've had them before and they are pretty easy to take care of. Whoever made our pig pen did a great job and we haven't yet had them get out when we didn't want them to. This first video is of the pigs when they were very young. They were SO tiny!!
Then, as they got older, we didn't let the kids in with them. They were ornery!! Nathan ended up with some expired milk and the pigs decided that that was ALL they wanted to eat. Whenever Nathan went out to feed them, they would fight over the milk. If you listen to this next video, you can hear the pigs squealing at each other and then trying to drink the milk at the same time. The result: pigs squealing and blowing bubbles under the milk. It was hilarious. I hope the video does it justice. FYI: the good stuff starts 1:45 into the video. I don't know how to cut it down, sorry.
We took the pigs to the butcher on September 29th and they'll be ready to bring home on Friday. I'm so excited to have pork!! The morning that we had to load the pigs, Nathan was pretty sick. We had all been throwing up and he got it the night before. He had set up a ramp going in to the trailer and was planning on just opening the gate and letting them in. It didn't work that way. After 15 minutes, I told Jo that I was going to check on Nathan and she was in charge. I went out and there were crazed pigs running all over the pasture. Nathan was so frustrated!! He said that he had to keep telling himself that bruised, bloody meat doesn't taste good so he didn't beat the heck out of them. We finally came in the house to cool down. He went back out and ended up using a huge piece of plywood to keep the pigs where he wanted them. When he didn't give them another option, they finally went in. I guess he wasn't enough of a threat by himself. We're just excited to have them in our freezer instead of chasing them all over the yard.
2 comments:
I'm going to try really hard to NOT think of those cute little pigs while I'm grilling pork chops next week! Thanks again for raising them for us to eat - cause heaven knows we couldn't do it!!
Sorry Rachel. I should have put a warning on the title for you. After raising them, I'll have no problem eating them. They were cute at the beginning, but not so much at the end.
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