Piglets are in the house

L. got her new 4H piglets on Tuesday and she is thrilled. The 9-week-old swine are super friendly and very cute.

They are a mix of the Hampshire and Yorkshire breeds and although siblings, they look really different (they probably have a mix of some other breed as well but we're not sure).

The male is black with the white band of a Hampshire (like L.'s pigs from last year). The female however is a lop-eared, all black pig.

As for their names, L. had a hard time making a decision this year (last year's Roman Mystery series book inspiration couldn't be used again). At her suggestion, I posted a query to my friends and family on Facebook to help her narrow down her choices.

After some input and L. doing a lot of hemming and hawing (i.e., code words for driving me crazy with her indecision, which is nothing new for us) she settled on...

Petunia for the all black female
Groovy Smoothie for the white banded male

And for anyone wondering, yes, Groovy Smoothie was named after the 4H Mini Forum Groovy Smoothie class. L. is quite pleased as she came up with the idea on her own. I would guess there will be a few chuckles from 4H friends at the Cumberland fairgrounds in September when they read that name over the loud speakers during the swine auction.

Groovy Smoothie and Petunia are snuggled up in a warm dry shelter for the weekend. When the sun makes a re-appearance in Maine, hopefully before the end to the long holiday weekend, the piglets will be out and about in their pen. That's when G. plans to get some better pictures of the little guys.

Pig moving, easier said than done

I spent way too much time worrying about the pigs escaping their pen all summer. Apparently once pigs grow accustomed to a place, they are very reluctant to leave it (although they always seemed to be faking us out with their chewing and digging). Why I did not know this before now is a mystery but a lesson learned for my novice pig-raising family. And one we are not likely to ever forget.

Yesterday our friends brought their livestock trailer over to our house to pick up the pigs and bring them to the Cumberland Fair. We purposefully did not fed the pigs breakfast so we could entice them with food to lure them in to the trailer.

L. tried grain.

Then bread rolls.

But no, the pigs were not fooled and refused to get near the trailer.

Then L. tried to coax them out the door with her pig board (white boards are used to direct pigs, which you often see at fair shows since pigs can not wear halters like other livestock).

She couldn't even get them close.

Then L., along with three adults armed with boards, tried to maneuver the pigs out the door.

But the pigs still could not be "coaxed" to leave.

So out came a couple of large, thick pieces of plywood to move around to close off parts of the pen as we worked the pigs toward the trailer.

After a slow start and several nimble escapes, the adults finally made this tactic work for Pulchra. But Titus, the big lazy guy who L. called her "snuggle bug" all summer, showed his true colors. We had a bugger of a time getting him out the door.

Have you ever had a 260 pound pig throw himself at the board you have braced with your arms and legs, and then crack the thick board across them?

No? Well let me tell you, it will leave you with a few bruises and some very sore knees.

After 45 minutes of manhandling and lots of disturbing piggy screaming, we did manage to get them into the trailer and off to the fairgrounds.

Once at the fairgrounds, the pigs required more manhandling to get them OUT of the trailer. But once out, they walked in to their pen without much more trouble (they were likely as exhausted as their human counterparts were).

Everyone was a little worse for the wear (pigs and the Almeida family) but Pulchra and Titus are now settled in to their new temporary home.

Here's a look into the early approach to getting the pigs in to the trailer.



Things started out calm and easy, which is when the above video was shot. But when it became clear that things were going to get ugly, I told G. to put away the camera and pick up a board to help. And trust me, it was better that we didn't get those high-pitched piggy screams on video. They were very disturbing and unsettling. No, it's better that part was not recorded, though I doubt my crew will forget this experience anytime soon.

This little piggie(s) went to market

L. has learned a lot about the day-to-day work of raising pigs since April and now she is getting ready for the next phase of this 4-H project - selling her pigs at the Cumberland Fair's 4-H Livestock Auction.

L. is responsible for "marketing" her pig to encourage people to come to the auction to bid on it. She wrote a letter to give to a few people (business owners, friends and family) asking them to attend the auction but asked me last night if I would also post it on my blog to, "let the moms know about it."

So here is L.'s letter explaining the 4-H Market Hog Auction at the fair. And please, forgive the shameless plug for L. but I figured I've shared enough stories about the pigs since April that I should include the ending of the project too.

September 2009 I would really appreciate it if you could come to the Cumberland Fair to bid on my market hog at the 4-H Livestock Auction. I have grain-fed my pig since I got her and I have taken good care of her. She’s had plenty of attention and exercise and is a good healthy pig. I am selling my hog at the livestock auction and I plan to put the money I get from selling my pig in to my savings account to use in the future. People who go to the auction to buy pigs sometimes go with friends and then they buy a pig together. If you buy my pig with a group it is cheaper for you to do it. Pigs are bid on by the pound. My hog is about 260 pounds right now. And there are people at the auction to take the hog to be processed or you can take my hog home to breed her (she is a mixed breed of Yorkshire, Hampshire and Duroc). I learned a lot about raising healthy pigs this year and I hope to do this 4-H project again next year. I learned a lot about being responsible for my pigs and raising healthy pigs. I hope you can come. 4-H Livestock Auction Wednesday, September 30 4 p.m. Show Arena From, L. Almeida

If you are wondering how she feels about the pigs going to market, I can honestly say it changes every minute of every day. Truth-be-told, I'm having the same mix of emotions as well. One thing is for sure though, there will be tears at the fairgrounds. No doubt about it. The question is who will have more, me or L. Because unlike the old nursery rhyme, no piggy is staying home - and hopefully none will run "wee wee" amok at the fairgrounds either!

8 new learnings about raising pigs

Learning #1: The pigs have not given up on their escape plans and have resorted to chewing their way out of their pen. The hole they've made is large enough to stick most of their snout through and the only thing from stopping a sniff of freedom is a stapled piece of a Tyvek feed bag (we used the empty bags to cover the shelter in an attempt to keep the rain off the already aging recycled wood we used to build it - it's worked well actually). Fino's working on a patch job as I type this since the escape plan was uncovered by L. this morning.

Learning #2: Don't ever say, "This is the LAST time I'm dumping sand in to this pen." Those words will bite you in the you-know-what (raising pigs has a tendency to do that) and you'll find yourself deciding one more time really is necessary. But in the spirit of ingenuity, and sheer discouragement at this necessity, Fino rigged up our trailer to the lawnmower tractor. Gathering and dumping sand was done with much more efficiency and we both wished this idea had come about earlier this rainy summer.

On August 30, after yet another significant rainfall, the pen was as muddy as ever and we felt another sand dump was needed to keep the pigs healthy.

Fino's new sand moving rig, which we are hoping not to have to use again this year.






Learning #3: During this latest sand dump we thought it would be helpful to secure the pigs in their shelter so we could keep the pen door open to shovel in the sand. But Titus squeezed through the small opening in the metal fence we used as a barrier for the shelter. Luckily we got the main pen door closed before he could fully escape. Had I not seen it myself, I would NOT have believed that Titus, a 240-pound hog, could ever have managed to squeeze through an opening hardly the width of a size 7 woman's boot.

Learning #4: Pigs love stale animal crackers. They grunted and nudged L. relentlessly after she gave them a handful of crackers looking for more. She felt so bad she didn't have any more that she fed them each a jelly sandwich (a rarity because the pigs are exclusively grain-fed). They wanted more of those too and L. decided they were never going to be satisfied so she stopped feeding them with a declaration, "You guys eat like pigs!" (She's quite enjoying her own pig humor these days.)



Learning #5: Chickens like pig grain as much as pigs do. While the pigs are trying to escape to the wilds of our backyard, the chickens who have free range of it are trying to get IN to the pig pen to snag their grain. This morning I had to pluck a chicken out of the pig pen. The hen recognized her error immediately and darted through the electric fence wires but couldn't manage to get over the secondary fence and back to freedom. What confused me most about this scenario (the chickens have been angling for a way in to the pig pen for a couple of weeks so it was only a matter of time before one tried it) was that the chicken seemed no worse for wear at having gone through the electric fence. I did an extra check to make sure the electricity was still running through the wires. It was. I'm thinking about re-naming that hen Houdini because it was nothing short of magic that fence didn't barbecue her.

Learning #7: A nice fall breeze can have an interesting effect on the odor in your house when its direction blows past the pig pen and through your large back door screen. We are now enjoying a fresher smelling breeze through the front door.

Learning #8: At no time can you loose your sense of humor during your first year of raising pigs. Anything less than laughing at your own naive notions about livestock is just not worth it. Grin and bear it and make changes for next time.

Did I just say next time?

                                        Big boy Titus is just a "giant snuggle bug" according to L.

Oh my, how you (the pigs) have grown

L. did a weigh-in for her pigs yesterday and it was, as expected, a messy and muddy affair. Even with the dry spell recently, the downpours from thunderstorms have kept the pig pen as wet and pond-like as ever. But we have been less concerned about the puddles these days because the water has been keeping the pigs cool in the hot temperatures (unlike the cooler, more problematic situation a few weeks ago).

Even before this weigh-in it was clear the pigs have had a growth spurt recently (eating 100 pounds of grain per week will do that do you). And because they are quite large, there is less space for them to manuever out of reach so I had hoped this weigh-in would be a bit easier than previous ones. But Pulchra is still quite agile and managed to get away from us while trying to get the measuring tape around her middle (a special tape is used to take measurements in order to guesstimate livestock weight).

We were successful in getting the job done and we guesstimated each pig was about 250 pounds. This revelation prompted L. to make the quintessential mama comment.

"Wow my babies have gotten so big!"

Unlike the last time, G. managed to get the antics of this weigh-in on video. And since compromise is important with my family, I conceded to posting the video of me (looking my best of course) trying to out-maneuver a large agile animal in a muddy pen.

As you'll see, the weigh-in went OK for Titus (aka "Bubby" these days). He's a laid back personality and a quick back scratch is all he needs to comply with most requests (I do appreciate his idea of exercise on weigh-in days). But Pulchra, she is a different story entirely.



And in case you'd like see how much these pigs have grown in a little less than three months, you can re-watch the video I took of L. doing the late-May weigh-in (they were a bit under 90 pounds then).



As G. reminded me (in the most recent video) the proper comment to say here is, "Holy Pig!"

Exercise at a gym? No need, I've got pigs

Rain and pig pens are not a good combo. Not only has the pen been a muddy awful mess for weeks, the puddles of water that are not drying up are now becoming a health issue for the animals.

A farmer friend told L. when she first got the pigs that she needed to check their poop every day. That the poop was the best way to confirm the health of her pigs. If something with the poop changed, that would be the first indicator that something could be wrong with the animal. And L.'s resource book about pig health explained that with pigs, a simple case of diarrhea could lead to death in just a few days.

Over the weekend I saw a couple of watery poops from Titus which made L. (and the rest of us) concerned.

The pen used to be dry in the spring (for all the irony that is at the moment) but now the water situation is at critical mass. I’ve joked about "Pig Lake" on my Twitter account a couple of times and the expansion of Pig Lake’s Basin (at the entrance to the pen). But the situation became more serious the other day and we cursed the weather and the pigs' natural inclination to root. They do this (dig) frequently and enthusiastically and the holes they create collect water that take much longer to dry up (maybe they're hoping to swim to China instead of digging to it?).

We also noticed that the smell of the pig pen had changed. This may sound strange to people unfamiliar with farm animals but there is a healthy stench to a pig pen. I think we’ve got a handle on that smell (which isn’t all that great but we’ve gotten used to it) and believed the standing water in Pig Lake was changing the smell into something more foul and unhealthy for the animals.

So it became time for us to review our options to deal with the situation this past weekend.

One option was to dig up the fencing and move the pen, which presented all sorts of logistics problems on how to contain each 200+ pound pig while we did that (an all day project in the best scenario). Our other option was to figure out a way to dry out the pen with sand. The sand option was considered the more do-able choice.

Getting sand into the pen meant digging it up in another part of our property and using the wheelbarrow to dump it into the pen. Yes, we could have purchased bags of sand from the home improvement store but we were worried about the store's sand salt content. In case you didn’t know, salt (even a small amount) can kill a pig so it’s important to minimize their exposure to it. We thought it best to use what was already in the pigs' natural environment (with the bonus of being the thriftier choice as well).

Earlier this summer we had dug a couple of holes in a far off corner of our property to bury the manure and dump the sand we dug in to the pig pen. We decided to do the same thing again only on a larger scale. (i.e., dig deeper holes, get more sand).

Each wheelbarrow filled by Fino and I required L.'s assistance once we got the wheelbarrow to the pen's entrance. She had to use a board to direct the pigs in to another part of the pen so we could wheel in and dump the sand. This was tricky because (1) the pig's are always angling for an escape route and (2) the pigs were thrilled with the piles of sand and immediately set to root in it before we could spread it out. We got a handle on getting in the pen but gave up on spreading of the sand with shovels and just used our boots to push it in the general direction that we believed would do the most good.

After more than a dozen sand-filled wheelbarrows and a sprinkling of hay and shavings we decided the pen was as dry as we could make it at that point. It was an intense aerobic workout that lasted nearly four hours and we were exhausted by the end. And as funny as this sounds, so were the pigs. They were laying down and snoozing as soon as we left the pen (around 10:30 p.m.) after the last wheelbarrow dump and didn't wake up until after 8 a.m. the next morning (usually L.'s out at their pen at 6 a.m. to give them breakfast but they were still fast asleep so she let them "sleep in" until 8 a.m. when she roused them by poking their noses to get them up to eat).

Of course it rained that night (this is the crazy summer of 2009 after all) and although Pig Lake had not fully returned, there were still plenty of puddles in the pen the next morning.

So last night we set about digging another hole (hopefully no one will trespass on our land and fall in to one of the large 4-foot holes!) and filling another half dozen wheelbarrows of sand for the pen.

Then finally, after much sweat and blisters, I think this morning we finally have a handle on the pig pen situation (which would be aided by the rain subsiding for a day or two, just putting in my cosmic order for that). The pigs' healthy stench is back and Titus' poop is back to being solid and looking normal again, much to L.'s relief.

Oh, and for those who have more experience farming than we do, it's OK to have a chuckle at our expense after reading this blog. It's our first year with pigs and we (kids and parents) are living the 4-H motto -- "Learn by doing."

I do think we're deserving of points for effort in getting this pig thing figured out though -- and my family is becoming healthier in the process with all the exercise we've had building the shelter/pen earlier this spring and taking care of these pigs during this crazy weather. There isn't much sitting around watching TV at our house this summer. The pigs and rain (as well as Chickenland) have ensured we have had plenty of exercise in our daily routine.

Who needs a workout at the gym when you've got pigs?

PIG LAKE - before

PIG PEN - after hours of manual labor
It's not pretty but the pen does seem to be a heck of a lot drier than it was the other day. Now if the rain can stay away for a few days we might not have to do another sand dump...
PIG PEN IMPROVEMENT - in progress
Pigs loved the piles of sand and there were many happy pig grunts as they set to work immediately to root.

L.'s getting good at directing the pigs with the board and pushing them around (they're twice her body weight now). This will serve her well at the fair in September when she shows her pigs.
The pigs love a good scratch. L. can have them on the ground in seconds and in a trance-like state of bliss afterward, which will be handy in keeping her pigs calm when they go to the fair.
And as you can see by the photos, there were those of us doing the manual labor and another (G.) who took a more documentary - and less muddy and physical - approach to the situation (although we cut her a break because she deals with plenty of mud and wet at the cow farm).

I don't love mud, especially pig pen mud

I'm grateful for today's sun because I'm hoping it dries up some of the mud in the pig pen. The pigs, who I mentioned previously have a mission to dig to China in them, have completely destroyed all the grass in their living space. And because of that and all the rain we've had the past few weeks, walking in to the pen to feed the pigs has been a very messy ordeal that absolutely requires tall rubber boots.



But Fino came through with some "upgrades" yesterday that allow for fewer visits in to the pen. He installed a barrel feeder that drops grain in to a box for the pigs eat (a tarp above the pen keeps the box relatively dry). The added bonus of this contraption is that it will save us money on grain since the pigs can't knock over the box (it's secured to the side of the shelter and has a box inside to control the release of grain) like their old feed pans.

To avoid all the spilled water dishes that make the mud even juicier, he installed some reinforced pipes (protected by a 3-foot stake in the ground) for water spigots that release water when the pigs nibble on them (it's nice they have something other than my butt to bite).

These pen upgrades took a couple of weeks because we were trying to avoid buying special livestock equipment (it can be pricey) and Fino needed some time to work out the building details. And after L. measured the pigs and discovered that Pulchra was approx. 130 pounds and Titus was about 120 pounds, we knew we needed to make everything extra sturdy. When pigs at these weights want to push something around they can do it!

L.'s been knocked around a little bit recently (we've been told pigs get more aggressive as they get older and we're seeing some of that) but the pigs like it when she scratches their backs so they don't mess with her too much. Even a few pig "kisses" is a majorly messy affair because these animals are covered from head to tail in mud (and appear happy to be that way) so L. leaves the pen covered in mud well above her tall rubber boots.

I am thankful for today's sunshine and hope that the forecast for the rest of the week is drier than predicted. If not, at least L.'s visits to the pen can be minimized to scooping poop and making sure the feeder and water spigots are working correctly.

Oh, and when you tell your kids to clean their room because it's as messy as a "pig pen" well, now you have some perspective on what that really means.