Pigs – Sugar Mountain Farm

Walking Pig Fence
Usually we herd pigs with sorting pens but once in a while it is easier to move them by wrapping a section of fencing in a circle and just walking the pig along. This is due to a pig being uncooperative. Most pigs herd quite well but once in a while there is one that is too skitterish.

This method does not work very well on rough ground and is not good out in the pastures but along the driveway the pig in a fence technique goes smoothly.

Releasing Pig
Once we got the pig to it’s destination, the loading pen, we simply set the openable section of the fence to the door and opened both. The pig then walked in nice as can be.

Outdoors: 64°F/59°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/63°F

Daily Spark: I only have one tattoo. It is a single dot. In the middle of my chest. It is the most minimal tattoo you can have and still have a tattoo. The way I got it was I was working on a drawing in art class and the teacher stumbled into me swinging my arm around so that I stabbed myself with the ink pen. Just one dot. Very fashionable.

Sows Moving to Underhill
Yesterday we finished the last of spring migrations, moving late gestation sows to Underhill, one of the paddock areas in the south field. They’ll have their piglets there and then move out to the lower south field paddocks to graze and raise their young ones.
Hope is laying a scent trail of small pieces of bread which the sows vacuum up as they move along. Will is walking behind with a sorting board which keeps them moving forward if they turn back.

We have little traffic on our road, about one car an hour during the day light, so heading down the road works fine.

One of the nice thing about older pigs is they’ve travelled the routes and know the routines. This makes moving them from pasture to pasture easier. As soon as we got to the field road up ahead the sows turned right and headed up the mountain trail. They were going home to summer pastures from their winter paddocks, glad to see the fresh green.

Outdoors: 61°F/40°F Partially Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/63°F

Daily Spark: Sign: “Will take both sides of a debate for the price of one.” -Anon

Pig Skull
Click for the Big Picture
I find bones fascinating. This is what we discover inside when all the squishy parts have been stripped away. Carnivores chew on them and sometimes leave one behind. Mice and insects clean the bones the rest of the way. The rain, wind and sun weather the bones, leaving aged ivory color.

This is a roaster pig skull I found this spring after the snow melted. It was where our livestock dogs dine. They devour their dinners, bones, teeth, hides and all for the most part but occasionally leave a remnant like this. It is quite amazing to hand the big dogs a big thigh bone and they immediately crack it and wolf it down. Gone. Teeth and jaws like that give one a lot of respect and make me very glad they’re on my pack.

Looking in through the base of the skull you can see the hollow of the pig’s brain case. The brain is small, about the size of a chicken eggs. Even when the pig is full size at 800 to 1,700 lbs the brain will still be small, like a chicken egg. Much of their brain is devoted to smelling. Pigs are big fans of smells. See the post Of Pig Brains and Tea Cups for another view.

You’ll note the front teeth are shovel like. This is great for digging up roots and bitting off grasses, clovers and other forages. Those big back teeth let pigs grind up just about anything – they’re opportunistic omnivores.

Discoveries like this are our version of finding a fossil, something we never do around here since our rocks are igneous rather than sedimentary. We don’t even have arrow heads. So Hope and I content ourselves with finding the bones of moose, deer, pigs, coyotes, birds, mice and other critters.

Outdoors: 72°F/55°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 70°F/67°F

Daily Spark: In a world where the FCC won’t let you use certain words on TV or Radio we’ll have to explain that Mary rode into Bethlehem on Joseph’s big butt. I would rather have mentioned his a**.

Berkshire Boar Spitz with Finishers
In the photo above Spitz, our Berkshire boar, is greeting the finisher pigs who were migrating over from the south fields where they wintered into his domain in the north. Much chomping of teeth and foaming at the mouth. Spitz was telling them all that he’s the boss in the north and not to forget it. Nobody challenged his position as king of the mountain.

The finisher pigs weigh 200 to 250 lbs. Spitz is head and shoulders above the crowd. He’s nearly twice their height at the shoulder, twice as long and twice as wide. I would estimate his weight around 850 to 1,000 lbs. He’s a big boy and that makes moving in a new group with him easier – everyone’s respectful and figures out their place right fast.

I measured Spitz this morning and he’s 87″ crown to tail base (Length) and 70″ in around the chest (Girth). Using the String Method this puts him at a possible 1,067 lbs – He is coming up on his third birthday later this summer. He’s tall too so he comes up to my chest – very tempting to ride although I’ve not trained him to saddle or bareback. Boars grow a lot faster than females so he is now taller, longer and far heavier than sows more than twice his age. Boars also put on a lot more muscle which pumps their weight up even more. This rapid growth makes boars a more economical animal to raise than barrows or gilts because they grow about 10% faster and are more efficient at turning food into meat. So what’s the disadvantage to boars? Well, they can’t get pregnant and they grow so fast that they eat a lot. On a grain diet that would get very expensive – one more advantage of pastured pigs.

Spitz also has tusks and plenty of pheromones to convey his message. That’s what the knashing of teeth and foaming at the mouth are all about. He’s generating saliva and releasing his “He-Boar” scent into the air so that all the other pigs know who and what he is. He is so dominant to the other pigs that this is all he has to do and there are no challengers.

Once introductions were over Spitz turned around and headed out to the north field pastures, followed by his new herd mates.

Outdoors: 70°F/54°F Partially Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/64°F

Daily Spark: Carrots Your Eyes

Pig with Umbilical Hernia
Not everybody’s perfect. Once in a while someone’s belly button doesn’t get properly tied by the doctor and you get an outie or it even comes untied, or unbuttoned, in which case you get a hernia as the guts spill out. Messy, messy…

Well, not really, outies, innies and umbilical hernias have nothing to do with tying off the umbilical cord. In fact, umbilical hernias are a congenital defect where the abdominal tissue is not tight enough leaving a wean point or hole through which the intestines are able to extrude under the skin creating a bulge like the one on the pig shown above. This is real and can happen in humans too.

There appears to be a genetic link to umbilical hernias. Years ago we had them more often, although still rare. I noticed that they trended in certain genetic lines within our herds so I culled out those genes over a period of many generations. When we got additional genetics a few years ago the gene for this showed up in that herd too and I’m working at weeding it out again. Infrequently popping up recessive inclination traits like this are the hardest to work on in a genetic program but persistence pays off resulting in gradual improvement of the herds. This works since only about 5% of females ever get to breed and only 0.5% of males get to breed. Nature runs her herds in much the same way.

Generally a pig will show the umbilical hernia by weaning age. If it is doing okay I’ll keep watching it and sometimes the pig grows fine right up to finisher size.

If pinched and unaddressed then the pig can die from the hernia so you want to keep an eye one it if you have a pig with a hernia. The pig would literally die of starvation amid plenty. If I see the pig start to lose weight that tells me that the hernia has pinched the intestines and the pig is no longer able to pass it’s bowels. That means it is slaughter time. These make fine roaster pigs, there is nothing wrong with the meat, they just won’t grow well.

You might even see the abdomen bloat like the assholeless piglets – the ones I refer to as being unopinionated.

I have heard of people using duct tape and half a tennis ball to push the extruding piece of intestine back in and then hold it within the pig in the hope it will heal up the hernia hole. If one were to do that then the pig should be separated from other pigs for the duration of the treatment as the cohort mates may rip off the tape.

Outdoors: 64°F/44°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/62°F

Daily Spark:

Whey Rock Escape Route
Pigs are not actually all that intelligent despite the anthropomorphism put forth by Hollywood. The fact is, pigs are very, very good at being pigs. But pigs are not dogs and pigs are not humans. Some things are way out of their ken. Something they do not understand well is sharp drops into water. This can be the death of them.

Another pig will push them into the trough in its effort to get to the water or whey. Or a pig will simply reach too far, over tipping and fall forward. Either way, they can end up drowning or chilling if they don’t have an easy route out that fits with their ways of thinking.

The problem is the sharp edge, the drop off and the smooth bottom in a fluid filled tank. They go into an instinctive, panic mode where they will just keep trying to kick off and slipping, falling back and repeating until they are exhausted. They never sit down and examine the problem, they just panic and react instinctually trying to run and jump.

For this reason it is important to setup escape routes for them from the troughs that work with their ways of thinking. The pigs need traction and ideally a slope to walk up out of the trough. Thus the rocks in the picture above. This takes away from the volume of the trough a little bit but it saves pig lives.

Another especially dangerous setup for a pig is a deep barrel waterer that it can plunge head down into. For this reason we fill waterers like that with a few rocks if the opening at the top is large enough that a pig might plunge in. Alternatively we make the hole on the barrel waterer small enough that the pigs can only stick their snouts in to drink but can’t go further. This keeps the pig out to begin with.

This is ergonomics as applied to pigs.

Outdoors: 70°F/50°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/63°F

Daily Spark: Some people try my patience. For that I say thank you for they make me a better person.

Normally we herd pigs using our hands or sorting boards but occasionally the situation calls for tighter control such as when a pig is being uncooperative. In such a situation a piece of stock panel fencing bent around in a circle and clipped with caribiners makes an easy portable container for pigs like these four little guys.[1, 2]

We could pick them up and carry them but pigs really don’t like being picked up. It reminds them too much of a predator grabbing them. Humans, dogs and cats pickup their babies and cuddle them – It’s a warm fuzzy feeling to us. Sows don’t pickup their pigets, unless they’re going to eat them. Being picked up reminds a piglet of Chere Fox who has ulterior motives. So when possible, moving them along the ground is a better alternative.

Generally a good line of sight trail that is scent marked works fine for moving the pigs but sometimes additional measures are needed. We had herded them from the north field down to the sorting area and separated them from the other pigs but for the last leg of the journey to the loading chute to the van they got the wire cage treatment as one of them was acting very skitterish – something I’m working at breeding away from.

How pigs behave is controlled both by genetics, their temperament, and by handling, that is to say training. We and the dogs work to train the pigs from a young age through taming and working with them. They get called and herded every week, even many times a week. But there can still be skitterish pigs that don’t work well in the group. I cull these rather than keeping them as breeders.

Temperament is strongly genetic. Early on I identified the mean genes and cull those from our lines. Now I’m weeding the skitterish pigs. The result is pigs that are easier to manage out on the pastures.

You’ll note the three dogs are circling up the pigs. They’re in herding mode. Our dogs work both as guardians and herders. In this case they’re circling around the group to keep it as a compact unit which is one of the herding techniques they use. That’s Hanno on the left, not to be confused with his identical twin Sirius, on the right is Remus and Kavi on the far side.

Outdoors: 67°F/39°F Overcast
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/62°F

Daily Spark: If you freeze yourself to -273.15°C you’ll be 0K.

Peanut Butter Relaxing in Spa
This is one of our sows, named Peanut Butter, relaxing in her beauty bath on a warm sunny day. It is not uncommon to see them sticking their tongues out like this when relaxing.

Mud is very important to pigs. There is a myth that pigs are very clean animals. This is a politically correct attempt to contradict the other myth that pigs are dirty, dirty, dirty animals. Both are wrong. Mud isn’t dirty and pigs aren’t clean.

Pigs love a good mud bath and mud is good for pigs.

Mud moisturizes pig’s skin: Pigs don’t have the oil product we humans have so they have to invest in expensive beauty products to keep their skin youthful looking. This is a simple reality caused by their evolution. The mud helps their skin retain it’s healthy glow which assists with all the usual reasons people put mud on their face.
Mud acts as sunscreen: Pigs are outdoors all the time and the UltraViolet in the sunlight can burn them. We don’t see sunburn in our northern climate in bigger pigs but sometimes will see a little in new piglets. Even dark piglets can burn. They recover but shade is critical for pigs for this reason. Perhaps part of why the older pigs don’t sunburn is they put on sunscreen, e.g., mud.
Mud kills skin parasites like ticks and lice: Pigs don’t have any way to groom themselves. Not only do they lack thumbs to hold combs but they can’t even bend their feet around or snouts to clean themselves. A dog, cat or primate can reach any part of their body by twisting around and even their head by using their paws. Pigs bodies and limbs are far more rigid – they’ll never make it in the circus as contortionists. They don’t even do social grooming although you’ll occasionally see one pig lick a spot on another if there is something tasty spilled on the lickie. Pig’s solution to the problem is mud bath’s which coat their skin and kill pests. Different strokes for different folks.
Mud keeps biting insects off: Pigs already have pretty thick skin but a layer of fresh mud helps keep biting insects off them. An even better solution is chickens which is why our pigs have the luxury of touring with their ensemble of guard hens that not only eat up almost all the bugs within a 1,000′ radius but also provide tasty eggs for younger pigs – cook the eggs to double the available protein and resolve the biotin antagonist.
Mud is cooling: Pigs have very few sweat glands. Human’s great innovation was sweat. We are really good at cooling our bodies with sweat. This allowed us to become long distance runners that could track and run down much faster prey by just keeping after it in tag team packs running it into the ground so it was exhausted and we could kill it for dinner. This transformed humans from mere scavengers, like pigs, into very successful hunters. The extra protein allowed for our brains to grow swelling our heads until we thought we were masters of the Universe. Pigs on the other hand can’t sweat so they can’t easily cool themselves down. This prevented them from this ego mistake. The mud is their solution to heat. A cool mud bath gives them a lot of surface contact with the earth which soaks out the heat from their bodies.
Mud is relaxing: No scientific data on this but if you ask Peanut Butter in the photo above she’ll give you “Relaxation” as her number one reason. Just look at that face, that expression, that tongue action.

Pigs need wallows in the warm season. Wallows are good. Mud is good. Happy pigs.

Outdoors: 79°F/46°F Sunny, Crystal Clear Blue Skies
Tiny Cottage: 68°F/63°F

Daily Spark: Hippocracy: the ruling government for hippos.

Octavia with New Litter of Piglets
~~QuarterMane~~^† Octavia is one of our older sows and this is a small litter for her. She may be on the downslope at the end of her fertility run after nine years. The typical pattern is a sow’s litter count climbs by about 0.8 piglets per litter (parity) until she plateaus. Then she starts to drop off at the end of her fertility. The drop tends to be much steeper. Perhaps a litter of six, then four, then one and that’s all she wrote.

It is almost summer now and Octavia will probably have another litter in the fall. That may be her last. Each winter I cull back the lowest performing sows as we go through the worst time of the year while they’re still at their peak of health from the warm season grazing.

Nine years is a very good run for a sow and she has done well. This means she has gotten a passing grade over 500 times as I do my weekly culling. That’s a very good record and speaks well for her offspring’s potential. Once she drops out of the breeder pool she’ll serve the farm one last time as high quality meat. A farm is not a petting zoo or old folks home. The reality is that a farm is a business that must pay the mortgage, the banker, the tax woman, the phone company, the power company, the petrol, the butcher, the baker and the candle stick maker. Money doesn’t grow on trees^††.

The idea of retirement, of being “put out to pasture” is Disney cute but not realistic. Everyone pays their way on the farm, serving up to their ability. For a pig nine years is a very long life, and in piggy paradise no less. In the end everyone ‘goes to the island’ to make their final service to the collective.

There is a mistaken idea that sows don’t make good meat. I think that comes from factory farming where the sows are kept in cages, don’t get enough exercise and eat too much – conditions that will produce fatty bland couch potatoes.

Our sows are out on pasture, climbing the mountain every day and thriving on a healthy low calorie diet based on forages and whey. They get huge but they never get fat and the meat on the older sows is fantastically delicious. My absolute favorite cut of meat is the Boston Butt from an old sow, filled with flavor, tender and beautifully marbled. You won’t find these at the grocery store – those are finishers, much younger pigs who have not had time to put on the deep marbling and flavor. This is a well kept secret perhaps. Chefs know it and request sows so we tend to have standing orders for any available. These big sows are ideal for making some of the fancier delicacies like prosciutto, pancetta and other charcuterie as well as pulled pork BBQ and huge smoked hams.

Octavia has been a good sow so I will watch her last litters for daughters that can follow in her rather large hoof prints. She already has some who have made the grade. Perhaps a few more will get on the breeder track to pass on her legacy.

Outdoors: 60°F/54°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/63°F

Daily Spark: It’s interesting to me that the USDA food pyramid lines up very closely with the rations used to fatten hogs and and cattle. -E. Brown

^†I had originally identified this as QuarterMane but it is Octavia, her littermate sister who looks similar but not quite the same.

^††Well, actually, money does grow on trees but that is another story for another day.

White Pig with Sunscreen
I mentioned about the various uses of mud[1, 2] the other day. This sow is showing off her beauty secret. She’s nude, although you might not know it from the thick layer of sunscreen she put on. She’s also pregnant and soon to pop.

The milkweed is for the Monarchs although we have seen none this year nor last. I hear they’re having a hard time between deforestation, pesticides, herbicides, GMOs and what not. Leave some in your fields and gardens so perhaps some will make the multi-generational trip and keep up traditions.

Outdoors: 71°F/61°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 68°F/65°F

Daily Spark: Just remember that perfect is a goal, not a state of being. Ever approaching, never there.

The Rubbing Tree
This tree is in one of the lower south field farrowing paddocks. As you can see it is a favored rubbing spot for the big sows who are farrowing and nursing down there. When cutting trees to make pasture, leave some stumps high and the livestock will enjoy rubbing on them.

With horses and sheep I see a lot more damage than we do with the pigs. The pigs mostly just rub the tree to scratch an itch. Sheep and horses tear off the bark with their teeth. They are especially fond of fruit trees so it is wise to fence them off with a guard.

Boars will occasionally pick a tree for testing their tusks. Generally this is a smaller tree. They appear to joust it. This reminds me of what moose do with their antlers, evidence of which I find sometimes out in the woods as stripped trees in vertical lines. Bears do it as claw scratching and back rubbing. Perhaps they’re all doing territorial marking as well as simply sharpening their tools of the trade.

For much smaller trees the pigs will simply eat them, as will sheep and cattle. Bush hogging works but requires mob grazing techniques and a lot of pigs to be very effective. I find that 100 pigs run through a two acre paddock for a month will mow out most of the brush. Then again later in the season for about two runs a year and the brush will turn to pasture. This is notable because I’ve often heard people think they’ll clear a five acre field of brush with a few pigs. They won’t. It takes a lot of animals doing concentrated grazing, mob grazing, to have that effect. More over, it takes big animals. Those 100 pigs I mentioned above were roaster, finisher and breeder sow sized animals – thats 100 to 600 lbs each.

Rotational grazing means the trees get a break from the animals. For even more protection the double fence lines leave a buffer zone that keeps larger animals off the trees. This is especially useful in the orchards and with young tree stock.

Outdoors: 72°F/63°F Mostly Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/63°F

Daily Spark: Luck is being open to opportunity.

Dirt Nest
I’ve mentioned how sows build nests before. Some of straw, some of sticks, some of stones. This sow built hers from soil. Cool soil to soak off her body heat in the warm summer days.

While the nest looks like a crater it isn’t actually all that deep, about 4″ down and 7′ across. She scooped soil from the middle up to the edges to create a rim. While she was farrowing this helped to route piglets back towards her. Once a sow goes into the farrowing trance she pays no attention to the piglets. They pop out and she just lies there pushing. At least that is how it works with a good sow.

Mahogany actually built two nests about 25′ apart. Perhaps she wanted a backup or more likely she just has very strong nesting instincts. In a confinement operation this would come out as bar biting and vandalism but out on pasture it shows up as building nests, ripping down some brush in the area and good mothering instincts.

Outdoors: 86°F/66°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 69°F/65°F

Daily Spark: Crazy people do crazy things. Some of them survive. It can be hard to tell who’s crazy, who’s lucky and who’s skilled.

Walter Walking South Field Sows
The objective was not to feed the sows a treat of bread but rather to train the near weaner piglets to follow me. We wean the piglets in batches. Each day one of us takes a walk through the field with a little bit of bread and leave a trail. The sows follow me and the piglets follow the sows learning to follow me in the process. At this point the piglets are expecting a treat when they see me coming.

This taming training is important because piglets born out in the mountain fields don’t get huge amounts of contact with people. The see us in passing but are more wild thang than cute pets.

The field training gets the piglets to follow me to where we setup a creep. The larger piglets go in and we close the gate. Smaller piglets can filter back out to continue nursing. Weaned sows then get moved to one of the boar herds where they’ll dry up, reheat and rebreed when they’re ready – typically in about seven days.

Outdoors: 77°F/58°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/63°F

Daily Spark: “I’m going to see if these rabbits hold water” sounds very strange out of context.

FDR – The Paralyzed Pig
That’s FDR in the photo. She’s a gilt weaner piglet named after the late great President. He had polio. I’m not sure what her problem is but she can’t use her back legs. Still, she gets around, dragging her paralyzed hind quarters behind her using her front legs. She’s a survivor.

Pigs are not nice people. They do not take care of each other. There is no empathy in pigs. No caring for the injured. No altruism. Pigs are about “Me First” and everyone else is a distant ninth.

Contrast this with human society and wolf society where we take care of our injured, bring them part of the kill to eat while they heal, doctor them through illness. Wolves and humans both do altruism. They gift give – something you’ll never find a pig doing in their natural society.

This brings us to why FDR is up at the dog house by our cottage and not out in the field with the other pigs: I was out walking and saw her dragging herself along hoping for a crumb of the bread I was broadcasting. Another little pig of her size saw her too and nailed her. It was all over her. Biting her. Pushing her. Tearing at her ears and face. There was nothing she could do to defend herself. There was plenty of food all around them and no need for the fighting.

I see this sort of behavior. Pigs attack the weak and will kill them. I suspect the reason they do this is because a weak animal in the herd may attract predators. By killing or weakening FDR and leaving her as the herd moves on the other pigs increase their odds of survival since the predators will stop to eat her. It’s a survival strategy for herd animals but not very nice. I cull against this but it is deep in the pigs’s ken.

So I picked her up and carried her to the cottage. Remus immediately took her under his, er, wing and has been nursing her back to health, feeding her donuts and telling the other dogs that he is the one who gets to doctor her. He’s very good with piglets, as are all of the dogs. They understand caring for the weak. That’s what they do. They understand altruism and gift giving. These are natural behaviors that cement the bonds of their pack.

I don’t know if FDR will ever walk. Possible causes for her rear leg paralysis include but are not limited to:

Sunburn/sunstroke
Bacterial Infections
Viral Infections
Botulism
Mycotoxins
Poisonous plants
Mineral deficiencies
Injury (e.g., stepped on in the case of a piglet)

Only the last one seems likely since she is the only pig exhibiting the problem. Yet, I see no dislocation, no injury to the skin of her back or legs. It is a puzzler. Thoughts on causes?

ThePigSite web site has a disease problem solver on it that might help if you’re trying to diagnose ills. It tends to come back with a lot of false positives but that can help identify some possible causes and then one can eliminate the impossible.

So there is FDR, paralyzed from the waist down but still a survivor. No wheel chair for her. Maybe she’ll make it. Maybe she’ll regain the use of her rear legs. With some palliative care her body may heal. That’s the hope. We and the dogs will care for her.

With this in mind, since she is a new weanling, I went to make her some yogurt. But low and behold, the only yogurt I had was a little bit of quite moldy yogurt in the back of the fridge. Normally I start with a nice clean culture. In fact, I’ve never tried starting with a culture this green and fuzzy, by far. On a desperate whim I blended it with a gallon of whole milk and some molasses and set it in a hot water bath in the kitchen sink to see if the Lacto bacilus could win in the battle against the green mold and what ever else was growing in that container. Miracles of miracles, a day later I had a gallon of yogurt! FDR was most appreciative. From that I’ve done two more gallon’s using each as starter for the next. I guess the good guys (Lacto bacilus) won.

Outdoors: 79°F/54°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 68°F/63°F

Daily Spark: Pigs have neither morality nor ethics although they will espouse both during an election.

Sow in Labor
This lady is birthing, that is to say farrowing piglets. I came across her in the lower south field which is full of a dozen late gestation sows and 49 newborn piglets from this week. She had built not one but three nests under the shade of an aspen tree. Such industry.

I suspect the reason she built several nests was that the shade of the tree kept moving so she would build a nest yesterday and then build another once the shadow of the tree changed places. The result is she was all ready for her big event, in triplicate.

I found her just as a piglet was born, number five of nine, and managed to get video of there to the end when the second placenta came out one hour later. That’s about twelve minutes per pig for those who are counting and curious about such things. Each piglet took about 10 to 15 minutes to clean itself off and circle around her to a teat, typically going up along her back side and over her nose but a few around her legs.

Typically the sows give birth without me being around but it is fun to get to observe the whole, or most, of the process once in a while. Watching was an opportunity to think about how to improve the farrowing pastures as I’m working on some new fencing ideas.

The sow did an excellent job, staying still and quiet in her farrowing trance the entire time. The only thing she said was “Go Away” to Little Lots, one of our #2 Large Black line sows who came over to investigate at one point. Little Lots left and the sow who has no human given name quietly continued with her breathing exercises as she gave birth.

This raises an interesting point. I know each and every sow, every breeder and most feeders. We have names for most of the breeders since we need to talk about them often. But I’m not a language based person so I don’t give names unless I need to talk about something. This sow is who she is. I know her. She knows me. I doubt she has a spoken name for me, just as I have no spoken name for her. Maybe she names me by a smell. I name her in my head by what she looks like – I have mental pictures of her. Yet, no spoken name for either of us.

Since she has given birth to two litters and passed the trials of breeding perhaps we should have a little contest giving her a human name…

Sow Naming Contest

Prize: Sugar Mountain Farm Calendar 2014. See these past calendars.

How To Enter: Leave a suggested name in the comments section and fill in your email address so I can contact you if you win. Bonus points for explinations of reasons for names.

Rules:

Names must be unique – I don’t reuse names;
Names must be polite;
Names can be of people, living or dead;
Names must be easily pronounceable without abbreviating;
Must be a name I can easily call over long distances;
Limit one entry per comment;
Limit three entries per person;
All entries must be received via the comments section – no email, phone or other entries will be considered;
Entries must be time stamped by midnight of August 31st, 2014 by my web server;
Contestants must reside on planet Earth and have a shipping address that doesn’t cost more than $15 in postage – I think that covers worldwide shipping for the calendars;
I may pick multiple names and use them for future pig names – this means multiple winners in that case;
I get final say; and
I get to make up new rules if I want to cover something more.

Fine Print: No monetary value. No entry fee. Just fun. Void where prohibited. Walk on the grass, barefoot. Watch out for turds.

Background on this sow:

A great mother;
16 months old – that’s about 23 years in Human;
Second litter;
Nine piglets in this litter;
Eight piglets in her last litter;
Same cohort as Spitzon but not related to him;
Spitzon was the father to her piglets;
Yorkshire type looking sow from the Mainline;
Excellent conformation, good growth rate;
Very white, blond hair, perky upright ears, long eye lashes, all natural, 14 teats;
Measurements: 56-56-56CCCCCCC;
Not sure what her dress size is as I’ve never seen her clothed;
Her sign is Aries and she likes long walks on the mountain, big husky guys who foam at the mouth, skinny dipping in the mud wallow, the social scene but not into night life; and
She’s quite friendly and calm but by no means anyone’s pet.

Leave your name suggestions in comments!

Outdoors: 80°F/62°F Sunny & Some Rain
Tiny Cottage: 69°F/63°F

Daily Spark: In the future everything will be free, for 15 minutes.

Big Sows – Far Nest
This is not a July picture. We do not have snow now – not this year in July. Thank you! It has happened. It has snowed in July but that is not what this is about.

What this photo shows is several of the largest sows who have nested on the far side of the hay storage area. Interestingly the largest pigs are the ones most willing to walk the longest distances.

They pass by the open south field shed which would provide them with a roof and has a deep bedding of wood chips topped by hay. The smallest pigs sleep there in the winter.

They pass by the plateau near wood chip pile where some pigs sleep of more moderate sizes.

They pass by the plateau center wood chip pile with hay where one and two year old sows were sleeping.

They pass by and around the end of the hay bales stacked two high and into the lee where they opened up a bale to build this nest.

In the warm months it is the bigger pigs who are willing to again walk the longer distances. Often several miles a day out to the far grazing paddocks and back. If possible smaller pigs drop off along the way to eat the nearer forages.

The longest the big pigs have walked is about one mile out from the center of our farm and then back for two miles in a morning. Since they were ambling around and grazing as they did that the actual pedometer miles must have been far more. The closest neighbors were a bit surprised.

Bigger pigs are willing to walk further – useful information when planning.

Outdoors: 82°F/50°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 69°F/63°F

Daily Spark: “Every day thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians. Help end the violence. Eat bacon!” -Anon

Sows Waiting
This spot is a junction of many fields. Sometimes that fence is open to allow free passage or for herding of pigs from the lower to higher mountain fields. Today it is closed with the carabiners you can see clipped on in the photo.

The sows, ducks, piglets and chickens are all hoping I might have a treat for them on my afternoon walk…

Outdoors: 74°F/48°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/62°F

Daily Spark: Picture showing a cutaway of the human brain, a little red circle over the frontal lobe with an arrow pointing into it with a sign saying, “You Are Here.”

Me and My Pig – Walter Carrying Roaster
Pigs get to a size where carrying them gets a bit more difficult like with this 80 lb roaster. The fact that he objected to being picked up added to the challenge. Fortunately he settled down and learned to ride on my back after the initial surprise at his new position in the world.

Normally we simply herd pigs along the ground which keeps things simple but in this case I had several roaster pigs that I was selecting from an area that has no easy pig walking path so I picked them up. Having them on my shoulder distributes their weight and lets me hold securely to their foot and up across their shoulder. Their back legs are on my back bracing themselves as they ride piggy back. Works.

Outdoors: 67°F/53°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/62°F

Daily Spark: #1 Best Reason to not have a Pig Roast: The wedding was called off because the ex-groom, now reconfirmed as a bachelor, caught the ex-bride, now his ex-fiancee, in a rather, er, compromising position with one of his now presumably ex-employees. For the second time. Best not to cross the threshold or start the journey on the wrong foot.

Black Sow and Piglets
This is her first litter, thus she’s what is termed a Parity 1 sow. Before the litter was born she was a gilt – that is to say a ‘Miss’ in the parlance of pig production. In olden times they termed a woman who had not had a child yet a virgin but the meaning of that term has changed with the times which creates some historical confusion.

Typically we get to spring just scraping by on the hay but this year we were fortunate to have extra so the sows have been getting the occasional bale out in the near fields. This tends to suck them inward at night and they often farrow at the bales or utilize them for gathering nesting materials. It’s an easy source of bedding. This sow and the one who farrowed with her have eaten down almost an entire bale despite also having pasture available. Interesting that they’ll still eat quite a bit of hay when the fresh greens are readily available.

Outdoors: 75°F/50°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/62°F

Daily Spark:
Ronald Regan said a rising tide lifts all boats.
I would suggest we make sure everyone’s not just
putting their boat in the water but the oars too.

Shoats in New Paddock
These are shoats, small pigs after the weaning stage. They’ve been rotationally grazed through the weaning paddocks, just completed the lower garden paddock for its fall gleaning and are now moving into the next paddock. What is of particular interest is that this is a well measured dining experience.

The paddock shown above along the old farm house is 35′ x 15′ and has grasses and other forages grown up to a height of 34″. There were 80 shoat pigs averaging about 30 lbs each. They grazed down all the forages in this space in 24 hours. This was all their food. They had not yet rooted so we did not hit a ceiling effect. They were satisfied with dinner. Stuffed pigs.

With the 34″ tall growth of mostly grasses I see the numbers as:

35′ x 15′ / 80 shoats

gives 6.5625 sq-ft per pig. Divide that by pig size times 100:

6.5625 sq-ft / 30 lbs per shoat x 100

gives us:

21.875 sq-ft per hundred weight of pig

as the daily area each pig needs for grazing. Looking at it per hundred weight adjusts for size to an average middle size pig from piglet up to finisher size of about 250 lbs.

An acre is 208.71′ x 208.71′ or 43,560 sq-ft so divide that by the above number yielding:

1,991 grazing days per acre

If the pigs take 200 days^† each to get to market weight from this age that gives:

9.96 ±1 pigs per acre or about 10 pigs per acre

Which is almost exactly the same number I’ve measured out on pasture with the entire herd and on smaller groups before. This is an interesting confirmation that we can sustainably raise about ten pigs per acre using managed rotational grazing. Note that this is without any commercial hog feed, no grains, no supplemental feed, just good quality pasture. Normally we do have whey available and the combination of whey plus pasture/hay is better than either alone. There is a synergy.

This paddock, which they mowed down in a day, will spring back from the seeds and roots in the soil and be better than ever for having had the grazing and the fertilizing of the pigs. This is actually it’s second cycle of the year. The pigs will move on to the next paddock and then the next as they rotate around the circle of life on the farm.

Outdoors: 63°F/41°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/59°F

Daily Spark: Patience is a must. Either that or be distracted enough to simulate patience…

^†We find that boars of our best genetics, the Mainline, get to market weight in about six months from birth over the warm season. Gilts take about a month or so longer. Barrows, which we don’t have since we don’t castrate, take about as long as gilts, maybe slightly faster. The other lines (Yorkshire, Berkshire, Tamworth, Large Black, Blackieline, Redline and crosses of these) take a little longer than the Mainline which has seen the greatest improvement as I’ve been working the genetics for the longest. All of them take a month or two longer in the cold season when they are on hay rather than fresh pasture and some feed energy is going to staying warm. Genetics makes a big difference in how animals will pasture be they pigs, cows, chickens or what ever. Adding supplemental feed will speed up the growth.

Walking Pig Fence

Sows to Underhill

Pig Skull Found

Spitz Head and Shoulders Above the Crowd

Umbilical Hernia

Escape Route

Moving Pigs in a Fence Panel

Mud Bath

Old Sow Piglets

White Pig Tanning Lotion

The Rubbing Tree

Nest of Dirt

South Field Sows

Yukka Yogurt & Pig Morality

South Field Sow Labor – Name that Sow

Willing to Walk

South Field Sows, Chickens, Ducks & Piglets

Piggy Back

Brimming with Milk

One Day of Rotational Grazing – Shoats

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