Three little piggies!

We have new life on the mini-homestead now. A few days ago, close to a week now, I think, our pot belly pig, Ellie May, gave birth. Sadly, most of her babies did not survive.

I found her early in the morning in a small shelter placed in the pig paddock, and could see that she had new babies. We'd been figuring she'd have them very soon since we'd seen her carrying leaves and small limbs to make a nest.

I saw some babies outside of the shelter that looked like they never made it out of the birth sac alive. Maybe they were born dead. And we could see 3 live babies suckling on her, with her just all content and on her side. Later in the day, we found 2 more dead babies where she had been laying. I'm guessing she laid on them because they were clean and free of the sac.

In all, it looks like she had a whopping 11 babies, with 3 of them surviving. They are getting all of her attention and milk, so they should do very well. They've been out and about in the paddock with the other pigs. The other two pigs (grown female and male) pretty much just ignore them, but Ellie May still grunts and snorts at them as a warning to stay away. Ellie May is full pot belly pig, but the other two are half pot belly and half American Guinea Hog, or AGH.

It looks as if the 3 babies are all males, which pretty well seals their fate for later on. We are raising small pigs so we can butcher them at home. Cute as these babies are now, they will outgrow their cute stage and become just pigs in a few months. Looks like we need to get started on building a processing station at the new homestead. We need that for pigs, chickens, and goats.

I need to set up an outdoor kitchen for canning in the hot weather, as I will be canning all the meat and rendering any lard.

In the meantime, enjoy this video of the three little piggies!

Taking down the fence and cabin update

It was hard work, but we got 90% of the field fencing down. There are sections here and there that need to stay in place till we get the animals moved, which could be in the next few days. It seems like everything needs to be done at one time. Well still retreat to this house for sleeping and showering a bit longer till everything is in place over at the new homestead.

We'll get what fencing we have put back up at the new homestead. I think we figured a field about 46 by 46 feet would be what we will have to make to start with, then as we go along, we'll add on to it, creating more paddocks so we can move the goats around.

We'll use the livestock panels to create an area for the pigs that we can move around. I plan to use them to till up garden areas and get rid of grass, grass roots, and tree roots, plus turn over and fertilize the soil. Their area will be 16 by 16 feet but with that being moved to new locations as we go, it should be just fine.

We'll also have the welded wire to build chicken runs from, instead of chicken wire. It's taller and it's sturdier than chicken wire. We'll put bird netting or something like that over the top of the chicken run, and they'll have opportunities to free range, as well, so they won't need a huge run.

Pallets will suffice to make shelters for the goats and pigs as well as for the chickens. When colder weather is coming, we'll find other things, even feed sacks, we can staple to the inside walls to help against the cold wind. We'll make sure all shelters are south facing, which was hard to do in our current location.

We talked to the cabin dealership and it looks like we could be getting the cabin on this coming Monday, April 25, 2016. I'm pretty excited but there's still a lot to be done! My son suggested using pallet boards for paneling inside the cabin, which means we need a sander to smooth them out a bit while retaining a rustic look.

I went out a bit ago to take pictures and videos of the progress and the animals, so I'll share a picture here and link to my video on YouTube.

Tiny Homestead Pigs

I sure do lose track of time, don't I?

Things are going well here so far. Since I last posted oh-so-long-ago, I've gained some little black pigs which are supposed to be part potbelly pig and part American Guinea Hog. They sure are small. We started out with 4 and they did fine in an enclosure where we had them temporarily.

After awhile, though, it was apparent that was way too small for them so we beefed up the "security" on the regular hog pen and put them in there. That was an adventure for sure since we had to bait them into a pet carrier one at a time, then move them to the other pen. After the first one, the others were pretty leery which meant me standing at one end of the small enclosure, just on the outside of it, and goosing a pig with a piece of PVC pipe when it got a front foot or two into the carrier, making it jump forward into the carrier while my son shut the little door on it really fast.

We set up a little house for them with lots of hay in it, for cold or rainy times, fed them really well, then crossed our fingers that they wouldn't figure out an escape route.

After a day or two, one of the little pigs died. We have no clue why. It was active and had a good appetite the day before. The others are doing very well, though. There is one especially tiny one that manages to get out of the big pen, and sometimes finds his way into the front yard. He's easy to put back in the goat pen, which is where he passes through on his way to the yard, but it's difficult to get him back in with the other pigs. Our older potbelly pig, Ellie May, isn't crazy about him but she seems to be tolerating him for now.

We are raising these for meat and breeding. There is one female and 2 males now. One of the males is pretty large so we'll probably keep him for awhile to breed with the small female and Ellie May. The runty little pig will probably have to be butchered. We just don't need that many pet pigs!

Here's a video of the little pigs over on my YouTube channel. Enjoy!