Category: The Animals

Pig plans and expecting a baby

Surprise, baby #3 is on the way. Due in Nov/Dec with another girl. If how much she moves right now is any indication, we’re in for it! This pregnancy has been very hard on my physically. I feel generally unwell a lot. My veins in my leg are really swollen and painful. It’s really prevented me from living fully as I had been.

So with another baby expected I’ve been looking at our pigs. I believe I only want to carry one female and our boar into the winter. Our boar has had a wonderful pen built for him so we will not have any more surprise winter farrowings.

As weird as it sounds I believe I’m going to keep our older female Tu-tu and slaughter the younger, smaller females that have farrowed. This would seem like a really odd decision except…these two smaller sows have had horrible problems free ranging. Grass seeds get into their eyes and I’ve been battling a lot of eye infections in them. I’ve had to lock them up 24/7 as a result. I decided I really didn’t want to breed pigs susceptible to eye problems so we are selling all of the young and eating the sows. I don’t believe other people will have the same problem with the eyes as I have had as I’m fairly certain I’m the only person ever to free range their pigs here.

So Ads are up for the piglets and we are excited to see them go to their new homes. Wish us luck!

Oh boy. I failed again

Breeding pigs is much harder than I had anticipated. After Tu-Tu’s first failed farrowing I had become convinced she was sterile. She was so sick after that farrowing and it’s been almost a year without a successful breeding.

So we bought some gilts to see if we could successfully breed them. They will be breeding age in March and I am excited to see how we do.

Then I started looking at Tu-Tu with some skeptical eyes. Is it just me or is she looking, well, pregnant?

I took some photographs, asked various pig people. Had other people out to look at her. The consensus was that she was not, in fact pregnant. Just really fat.

Still, I had a strange feeling about her so I put her into seclusion in the barn. She was there for a week without showing any changes to her body and I began to doubt myself. She must not be pregnant and I’m losing my mind, I thought.

Then one morning, after our first night in the negative temps, I went out to feed and…babies. Babies everywhere. 8, in fact. All frozen completely solid. Little blocks of ice.

I gathered them up and took them to the burn barrel to be cremated and cursed myself for not keeping a better eye on Tu-tu.

How can I be so bad at this?

Tu-tu is out and about with the other pigs after breaking a solid metal horse gate after a week. I had hoped to keep her confined until February so I can plan these farrowings better. Hadn’t expected that gate to be so easy to snap.

Am I the only one doing this?

Alright people, if you’ve been reading my blog at all you’ll be surprised by what is to come. I’m starting to feel like a weirdo. Yup. All the stuff I’ve been doing and I’ve never felt particularly weird about it. This pig thing though, it’s starting to make me feel weird.

Am I the only one “free ranging” pigs with other animals? Am I the only one not having any problems with it? It’s so easy. I have the laziest system set up in the entire world. This is awesome, because I am essentially lazy at my core.

I have considered that it is the area that has made me so successful at this. We have 40 acres. We have wheat fields in front of our acreage. Our neighbors houses are placed so that there is maximum distance between our properties. Our road is only used by 3 families. Also, it’s Wyoming, old wheat fields that have been over grazed since being developed into residences. In short, there is pretty much nothing to eat off of our property.

So, perhaps I am not having any problems because there is nothing tempting my little piggies to wander. Maybe I’m just lucky. I don’t know. All I know is I open the gate in the morning and all of my animals come pouring out. Chickens, ducks, geese, peacocks and pigs. They all hang out together in the barn until release. Then the smarter chickens follow the pigs around waiting for them to dig up delicious morsels.

The pigs themselves wander here and there. We have no fences around our acreage that would keep a pig in except for those around the barn and yard. A few times they’ve gone to the end of our property to nibble the weeds around the road. We escort them back when they do. The neighbors are used to the sight of fat black pigs wandering about. At night they put themselves up and I shut the gate again. A few times I’ve heard coyotes close and have gone out earlier to lure the pigs back to the barn with a bucket of treats. This is, of course, not because I’m worried about the pigs. It’s because I’m worried about all the birds who would be left with the gate open until the pigs returned. The pigs can handle themselves. Our dogs are terrified of them.

As I watch YouTube videos and read blogs of various people I notice pigs are treated with suspicion. People seem afraid they’ll eat the other animals or escape to never return. I admit to being surprised by this attitude and it makes me feel…well….weird.

I should also note I don’t feed them except when absolutely necessary. We give them our food scraps but otherwise spring, summer and most of fall they are on their own. Get out and find food or starve!

I don’t want to mislead you all though. We had a dog break in and kill our chickens. When I went in and started making a pile with the bodies I woke the pigs up. They went to work destroying all the evidence aka eating the dead chickens. I don’t know that I would leave someone actively bleeding out there with them. However, I’ve seen them wait and watch a chicken die. They didn’t approach it until it was actually dead. Then they ate it no problems. Pig morals.

They’re just wandering in this picture.I took it from our living room. I love watching them meander.

New Additions

We had a problem this year. Mainly that neighbors dogs broke in and killed most of our chickens and peachicks. Suddenly we were down to 2 chickens, when it was decided 6 were needed to supply the family with enough eggs. What to do.

In comes the wonderful community we have around us. We were given 3 chickens. Happiness.

Then 4 egg laying ducks were given to us. Then a little call duck drake was given to my daughter. Suddenly we had geese. Then yet another egg laying duck was given to us.

There we were, completely without poultry and BAM, plenty of birds meandering the farm.

Now this has had an impact. The pond has been completely free of birds for the year. I had grasses and reeds growing. The pond was actually clear most days. The pigs were enjoying it and digging it out like crazy but otherwise, a healthy ecosystem.

The ducks didn’t make that big of an impact. The initial 4 were young and did not create that much of a mess. The geese, now they were a problem. I did not even consider how quickly and completely they could destroy all green matter around the pond. The grass, pretty much non-existent. All of the plants growing up around the pond, destroyed.

I was a little discouraged by all this. I was thinking about how tasty those geese would be. However, I think they can stay. They’ve started venturing out of the fenced pond area and onto the property as a whole. Our acreage can certainly withstand the appetites of two Sevastopol geese. In fact it was a beautiful morning, looking out the windows and watching our chickens, ducks, geese and peafowl wandering the property finding food.

Look at that fat pig!

Indeed I still haven’t fed anyone. I won’t until all the green on our property is gone. I will feed through the winter only. Even without feeding I have fat animals. Happy animals. Healthy animals. It has been a beautiful season with the animals.

Bees- costing way more, way more quickly than expected

Our bees are doing great. Really great. So great we’ve already had to purchase 3 additional boxes to expand the hive. I am thankful for all of the bee food we’ve been laboriously planting all these years as it’s made bee keeping a breeze. Well, except for how bee like my bees are being.

It turns out my bees really could care less about where they build their comb. My hive has foundation in the first two boxes and I have a lot of cross comb and burr comb happening. I was opening the hive every 2 weeks to cut this out but it matters not, they are still doing it. I know what you bee people are thinking. Is your hive level? Yup. Is it facing the wrong direction? Maybe. I did move it around though in the hopes it would help. It didn’t. My bees are just busy and they don’t care if I can access the hive or not.

So when I put the honey super on I took the foundation out. I really hoped that doing so would encourage the bees to build on the frame better. What did they do? Well they built their comb across every frame. Now I can’t even lift any of those frames out. What a pain!

I wanted to be a “good” bee keeper. I’m finding though, my bees think keeping away from them is as good as it gets. We aren’t planning on harvesting any honey off them anytime soon. In fact if this hive can simply be split to produce other hives, we’d be happy with that. Plus, pollinating the orchard and other plants is a huge plus!

So we are going to go into winter with a strong colony. I hope to either catch them swarming or split them next spring. Stay tuned!

Bees- Take 2

Last years bees didn’t quite work out. Not to be deterred we are trying again. This time we bought a small langstroth hive. When they outgrow it we will move the established colony into the top bar hive I built.

We had a lot of debate about where to put the bees this year. Last year we discovered ants had taken over the bee feeder. I was concerned about that this year as well. I researched the ants, as I had no idea what kind they were, and found they are Formica ants.

This years feeder has the same cage on it, to keep the birds away, but I’ve moated it off from the ants. The bees have the benefit of food and water all in one place as well. I thought it quite brilliant.

I also thought placing the bees in our established tree line was brilliant. I was told by members of the Southeast Wyoming Beekeepers Association that the hive needed morning sun. The wind absolutely howls from the west here and our tree line blocks most of it. Placing the hive up against our thickest line of trees for wind protection was brilliant. Elevating it above the lilac bushes in front, even better. We screwed a nice pallet into the spool we placed so that we are able to strap the hive down, keeping the lid from blowing off and the whole hive from blowing over. It also left a nice space for the feed/water. I’m tall so getting into the hive isn’t a problem. I did prop a nice pallet up for stairs should I need to get all the way up there. All in all I am extremely pleased with the set up this year.

Installation went much smoother this year as well. The only issue I had was the marshmallow falling out the second I turned the queen box over. I just quickly dumped half the bees on top and closed the lid. It took a few hours for everyone to make their way inside but it has been several days and they are still there. I’d consider that a success.

We don’t have much food available for the bees at the moment. Just some dandelions that I haven’t seen a single bee on.

The lilac are close to blooming and all indications point to a bumper crop of sweet clover, so they’ll be overwhelmed with food options soon.

All in all, a hopeful start to this years bee keeping.