Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Hogs on the Farm

Sometime in September, I got an email from the 4H office. Would any of our kids be interested in raising and showing hogs? I asked Zivah. "YES, YES, YES!" was her immediate response. Joe wasn't quite as enthused, but once he figured he might be able to make a little money off the sale of the pig in the end, agreed to participate as well. 

A couple weeks later, we had a pen erected around my garden plot in hopes the hogs would do some clean-up and tilling for me, some bales of hay and plastic-covered wood for a shelter, and a good amount of excitement. We were hoping for a male and a female. The male we would butcher when the time came and share half with my brother, who was "going in" on the whole thing with us. The female, if all went well, we would breed in an effort to expand the Funny Farm's meat production prospects.

The hogs were delivered on a Saturday in mid-October. The smaller of the two was a barrow, weighing in around 50 pounds. The bigger, pink one was a gilt, weighing about 75 pounds.





They did a great job tilling up my garden, and we ended up building a pen off the stable so they would have some dryer shelter when the rains came. The kids have taken them out a couple times to work on their showmanship skills (which was quite the thing to watch); and now it is January, and the 4H Junior Swine Show starts tomorrow. Time does fly. (I'm glad pigs don't.) Chip, the barrow is now weighing about 200 lbs, and Rosie is right behind him in size. I wasn't sure they would make it to show weight, but they did!



We are trying to decided which would be better: coaxing the pigs up a narrow ramp into a cage on the back of the truck, or me driving a trailer. It is all kind of nerve-wracking for a city-raised girl like me, but, oh, what an adventure.

1 comment:

Tina said...

just a heads up that we learned in all the years of pigs in 4-H. When you transport gilts, they have a tendency to start to come into heat, saying that they tend to get grouchy and want to fight other pigs. lol BTW Jeff & Teri loved taking gilts to the fairs, became known as Shipps' fighting pigs.