Thanks to a little horny boar prospect busting in with the gilts that were to be turned into bacon last week........ I am having litters of pigs popping out all over the place. Thought I would share some of the pics. LOL I have room to farrow 6 sows at a time and I have 24 farrowing all within 1-5 days of each other. So making make shift farrowing pens in every barn and even in the livestock trailers. This little hereford cross is what I am taking a break from now, we ended up with 11 sliding out in this litter about 20 minutes ago. This was the second to the lat litter today, the hen is not even a little bit happy that a sow and her babies are in the hen house. This is the litter I started this morning out with at 4am have them in one of the three compartments of the Gooseneck trailer. The other two sows in that trailer should farrow anytime between now and midnight. Almost hate showing pics of this girl, she always has huge litters and they suck the life out of her making her look starved nearly to death. Can't put enough feed into her to keep her weight on. These are a planned farrowing and they are 7 weeks old. 18 in this litter, her biggest litter was 22. I usually time her to give birth the same time as one who always has 5 piglets in her litter does. Then adopt 6 or so to the sow with the litter of 5. Didn't work out that way this time
piglets like baby ducks or chicks are adorable and they grow up, you look like you have lots of room for them =)
Hampshire make up pretty much all of my sows, and are the foundation of the whole set up. I tried keeping a small herd of Durocs don't know if it was just the line I had or the breed in general, but they had a mean streak out of this world. Loved the pork hated handling the mean little F'rs.
It's the breed. Straight Durocs were fine until they hit about 80# after that, I was the only one that went into the pen with them. Mean and fast. Crosses were better until they were closer to 150# then they ate everything and were real pushy and bitey.
Yep MEAN they had to go, we have too many kids visit the farm. LOL remember even the babies at 3-4 days old were mean and would try to strip flesh off fingers with the needle teeth.
32 more piglets born overnight bringing the total to 179 with 3 more left to farrow. We have a little pool going on for what the final number will be, My wife said 190, her niece that lives here 230 and me 210. Winner gets to pass their KP off to the other two for two weeks Unless they are really small litters the wife is going to have 1/3 more KP and unless they are really big litters Niece is going to have 1/3 more as well Really hoping I win would be nice to not have to cook or wash dishes for 2 weeks! Would really suck to have to do 1/3 more cooking and dish washing
