Hello! My name is Arrowti and I live in central Maine. To date, we raise pigs, chickens, and ducks - pigs for breeding and meat, ducks for eggs, and chickens for meat and eggs. We will be adding turkeys next month, though, and eventually want to either get a cow or a pair of goats.
Anyway, I think most people click on these to see pictures. I'll introduce you to our major members of our farm, like our breeders, and their piglets, and a few ducks and things...
First, we have Wilma. She will be two years old this far and has recently had her second litter. Her first litter she had 3 barrows and 3 gilts. Her first litter, she had 7 piglets, 4 stillborns, 2 dead, and 1 survivor. We believe the losses were due to her being lame for a few months while she was pregnant and not wanting to move much, as well as the stress of being moved several times as we were trying to get more fences in for more pastures. Wilma is currently raising her surviving daughter, Pebbles.
Wilma is a pure mulefoot sow, ~450-500 pounds (we haven't measured her in awhile). She's very protective of her baby and chases away the other piglets who want to play with her.
Bell is our other sow who is mothering her second and final litter, due to aggression and resistance to take care of her piglets. She isn't careful and crushed, stepped on, and tossed several of them against the wall when she gets up or lays down. She's a little bit too big to be a mother, I think. She had 9 piglets in her first litter. She had 13 in her second, but crushed 2 and 1 was stillborn.
Bell is a Tamworth/Duroc cross, approximately 700+ pounds.
Pebbles is Wilma's daughter, and will be a gilt that we will keep. She is a pure mulefoot. She is playful, energetic, curious, and super speedy. She does everything her mother does.
Gimpy is one of Bell's daughters who she stepped on, tearing a large patch of skin off her leg. The muscle was visible on a large area of her leg for over a week before the wound began to heal. She walks with a limp but is constantly getting better. If you saw my post in the injured pig forum about skin torn off on a piglet you'll see how much she has healed since then!
This is what is left of the scar - ignore the piglet butt, they just kept getting in the way!
She is a mulefoot/tamworth/duroc mix.
Ginger is our third sow. I couldn't get a picture of her because she was somewhere out back in the woods, but I'll add one soon! She is a pure Tamworth sow. In her first litter she had 8 piglets. We haven't bred her yet but plan to so she'll deliver this fall. She is approximately 600 pounds.
Fred is our boar. He is the father of all the litters born on our farm. He is a pureblood mulefoot, very sweet, gentle, calm, but also has a very high libido. We have some of our uncastrated boars with him so they don't try to mate with the females, and those will be sent to the market. He makes sure they're in good shape, and has basically taught them that it's rude to hump each other and that screaming for food during feeding time won't make us get to them any faster! He is almost two years old and starting to grow in tusks. He is probably around 600 pounds. Not the best picture... he wouldn't stop moving!
Our Other Animals!!
So I absolutely love our ducks (they're my favourite part of the farm... shhh... don't tell the pigs!)
We have 5 cayuga/pekin mixes (cayuga is a black duck with green highlights, and the pekin is the big white duck that's usually eaten), one of them is a male... we have 1 pekin female.
Fatty, our pekin female looks good as usual. She's absolutely beautiful and has big, round blue eyes, that look so innocent even as she's stealing food out of pig bucket every time you turn your back!
Opie, our drake, is friendly, peaceful, and protective. He's not afraid to chase 'threats' to his girls away, whether it be our insanely mean rhode island red hens or the 50 pound labradoodle who just lives to sniff the butt of every animal in existence!
We also have 3 roosters and around 40 laying hens of various breeds. As I mentioned, our rhode islands are mean like crazy and beat up on the poor gentler hens and try their luck with the ducks with little success - if they peck a duck hen, Opie attacks them. They don't mess with Opie!
Here is our dorking mix rooster, Vanilla, with a Buckeye hen.
That's all for pictures right now. I'll add more if you want more. I'll try to update this every day with happenings going on around our farm.
As for today... we got 101 cornish cross chickens (I call them tweet tweets because they're only three days old) yesterday. Those are the meat birds. We'll get a second batch of 100 in a month or so. NO we aren't eating 200 meat birds! We usually sell most of them and keep 20 or so each year. We sell our eggs and pigs too, as we definitely aren't eating 20 hogs per year!
We have 3 uncastrated boars going in on May for processing. We're testing them for boar taint. If there is any they'll be turned to spicy sausage. Their mother, Ginger, was the most protective mother we've seen, and wouldn't separate from them for anything. She charged at anyone who tried to pick up a baby, so we decided to leave it and see if the mother or father lines have boar taint in them.
There were 3 pigs running around our yard the other day... and they weren't! People have been calling us all over town reporting pigs running around and we have no idea whose they belong to. No one has said anything! If they come back we'll try to capture them so they don't cause trouble or get killed in an accident or something. We know they aren't ours, because we counted, and they are pink hogs, and we only have 2 pink hogs and one of them is nursing piglets. Strange...
Our dog is a labradoodle, about 50 pounds, who has never attacked any of the animals. She's more interested in sniffing and chasing, but is scared of the pigs... and only when the pigs look at her, otherwise she's right in their butts. She also has epilepsy, and she had her latest seizure a few days ago. I'm worried she'll have one when she's in a dangerous place, but so far she's almost always inside with us.
Anyway, this is probably a really long post so I'll cut it here!
Anyway, I think most people click on these to see pictures. I'll introduce you to our major members of our farm, like our breeders, and their piglets, and a few ducks and things...
First, we have Wilma. She will be two years old this far and has recently had her second litter. Her first litter she had 3 barrows and 3 gilts. Her first litter, she had 7 piglets, 4 stillborns, 2 dead, and 1 survivor. We believe the losses were due to her being lame for a few months while she was pregnant and not wanting to move much, as well as the stress of being moved several times as we were trying to get more fences in for more pastures. Wilma is currently raising her surviving daughter, Pebbles.
Wilma is a pure mulefoot sow, ~450-500 pounds (we haven't measured her in awhile). She's very protective of her baby and chases away the other piglets who want to play with her.
Bell is our other sow who is mothering her second and final litter, due to aggression and resistance to take care of her piglets. She isn't careful and crushed, stepped on, and tossed several of them against the wall when she gets up or lays down. She's a little bit too big to be a mother, I think. She had 9 piglets in her first litter. She had 13 in her second, but crushed 2 and 1 was stillborn.
Bell is a Tamworth/Duroc cross, approximately 700+ pounds.
Pebbles is Wilma's daughter, and will be a gilt that we will keep. She is a pure mulefoot. She is playful, energetic, curious, and super speedy. She does everything her mother does.
Gimpy is one of Bell's daughters who she stepped on, tearing a large patch of skin off her leg. The muscle was visible on a large area of her leg for over a week before the wound began to heal. She walks with a limp but is constantly getting better. If you saw my post in the injured pig forum about skin torn off on a piglet you'll see how much she has healed since then!
This is what is left of the scar - ignore the piglet butt, they just kept getting in the way!
She is a mulefoot/tamworth/duroc mix.
Ginger is our third sow. I couldn't get a picture of her because she was somewhere out back in the woods, but I'll add one soon! She is a pure Tamworth sow. In her first litter she had 8 piglets. We haven't bred her yet but plan to so she'll deliver this fall. She is approximately 600 pounds.
Fred is our boar. He is the father of all the litters born on our farm. He is a pureblood mulefoot, very sweet, gentle, calm, but also has a very high libido. We have some of our uncastrated boars with him so they don't try to mate with the females, and those will be sent to the market. He makes sure they're in good shape, and has basically taught them that it's rude to hump each other and that screaming for food during feeding time won't make us get to them any faster! He is almost two years old and starting to grow in tusks. He is probably around 600 pounds. Not the best picture... he wouldn't stop moving!
Our Other Animals!!
So I absolutely love our ducks (they're my favourite part of the farm... shhh... don't tell the pigs!)
We have 5 cayuga/pekin mixes (cayuga is a black duck with green highlights, and the pekin is the big white duck that's usually eaten), one of them is a male... we have 1 pekin female.
Fatty, our pekin female looks good as usual. She's absolutely beautiful and has big, round blue eyes, that look so innocent even as she's stealing food out of pig bucket every time you turn your back!
Opie, our drake, is friendly, peaceful, and protective. He's not afraid to chase 'threats' to his girls away, whether it be our insanely mean rhode island red hens or the 50 pound labradoodle who just lives to sniff the butt of every animal in existence!
We also have 3 roosters and around 40 laying hens of various breeds. As I mentioned, our rhode islands are mean like crazy and beat up on the poor gentler hens and try their luck with the ducks with little success - if they peck a duck hen, Opie attacks them. They don't mess with Opie!
Here is our dorking mix rooster, Vanilla, with a Buckeye hen.
That's all for pictures right now. I'll add more if you want more. I'll try to update this every day with happenings going on around our farm.
As for today... we got 101 cornish cross chickens (I call them tweet tweets because they're only three days old) yesterday. Those are the meat birds. We'll get a second batch of 100 in a month or so. NO we aren't eating 200 meat birds! We usually sell most of them and keep 20 or so each year. We sell our eggs and pigs too, as we definitely aren't eating 20 hogs per year!
We have 3 uncastrated boars going in on May for processing. We're testing them for boar taint. If there is any they'll be turned to spicy sausage. Their mother, Ginger, was the most protective mother we've seen, and wouldn't separate from them for anything. She charged at anyone who tried to pick up a baby, so we decided to leave it and see if the mother or father lines have boar taint in them.
There were 3 pigs running around our yard the other day... and they weren't! People have been calling us all over town reporting pigs running around and we have no idea whose they belong to. No one has said anything! If they come back we'll try to capture them so they don't cause trouble or get killed in an accident or something. We know they aren't ours, because we counted, and they are pink hogs, and we only have 2 pink hogs and one of them is nursing piglets. Strange...
Our dog is a labradoodle, about 50 pounds, who has never attacked any of the animals. She's more interested in sniffing and chasing, but is scared of the pigs... and only when the pigs look at her, otherwise she's right in their butts. She also has epilepsy, and she had her latest seizure a few days ago. I'm worried she'll have one when she's in a dangerous place, but so far she's almost always inside with us.
Anyway, this is probably a really long post so I'll cut it here!
