Baymule's Pigs 2017-2018

baymule

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Slaughter date is November 6, counting down. We made the decision not to keep the sow, we are not set up to farrow a sow in winter. She is showing heat and has a real bad attitude. :\ She has tried to bite me a couple times and I walloped her with a shovel. I don't go in there any more than I have to. I wait until the heat of the day when they are laid up asleep to retrieve their feed pans. Sometimes I just throw down a flake of hay and pour their corn over that. They eat the hay too. I lost their water trough for 3 days, I couldn't see it anywhere and without a line of sight to run in and get it, not happening. I finally saw it up against the outside fence and was able to go out the front gate and around to get it. Lucky for them that they have dug pig ponds that I can fill with water. :lol:

If she is this mean now, she will be a 400 pound holy terror if she farrows. So we'll just pack them both in the freezer, we have a half hog sold to 2 different families which will make us a little money on this deal. Not too bad.

I am going to rethink my pig raising. I will continue to buy and raise feeder pigs. I am going to build a dedicated hog pen with a better watering system. The feed bin feeder I have for the feeder pigs will continue to work, but I didn't use it for these wrecking machines we have now. ;) I'm not going to put them in one of my pastures as we work too hard for pigs to root it up. Where ever I put the pen, it will have back up the trailer access, kinda hard to do when we have so many trees. But I'll figure it out.

9 more days......
 

baymule

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Hogs are loaded. We built a small enclosure with one cow panel and a half one for a gate in the corner where the 12' gate is. Then we could block them out while we opened the 12' gate and DH backed the trailer up. Our neighbor Robert came over to help. DH dumped wood chip mulch and raked it up for a loading ramp.

I didn't feed them yesterday so they'd be hungry this morning. I saved a stinky soured bucket of corn and when they got a whiff of that, they were pretty easy to get loaded. We opened the half cow panel gate, let them into the enclosure, then shut and tied it off. After several false starts, they both climbed in and the end gate banged shut.

They are parked in the shade and I spray them down once an hour to make sure they stay cool. I fill their water tub, they blow bubbles then tump it over. We pull out 6:45 AM in the morning.

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baymule

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Just dropped them off. Pick up meat in about 2 weeks.
 

baymule

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Got hanging weights. The sow is 245 pounds and the boar is 216!! Wowzers! The sow just took off growing and got bigger and bigger! She passed the boar up. So if hanging weight is 245, she must have been bumping 500 pounds live weight! SOOOOOOO glad I didn't keep her!
 

NH Homesteader

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That's pretty big- those are average live weights for when we butcher! How old were they, do you know? Our friend butchered an older sow once and she was just... Awful. Hope yours prove yummier than that one was!
 

CrealCritter

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Got hanging weights. The sow is 245 pounds and the boar is 216!! Wowzers! The sow just took off growing and got bigger and bigger! She passed the boar up. So if hanging weight is 245, she must have been bumping 500 pounds live weight! SOOOOOOO glad I didn't keep her!
I'm so envious... all that great pork:drool
 

baymule

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That's pretty big- those are average live weights for when we butcher! How old were they, do you know? Our friend butchered an older sow once and she was just... Awful. Hope yours prove yummier than that one was!
How was she awful? Tough or taste bad? This one better not taste bad.... all that soured corn and goat milk whey they got! They got lots of graze too, they tore up that pasture!
 
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