And then there were 20...

Numbers appear to have increased again. Ed is fast becoming a porcine kleptomaniac. Several weeks ago, whilst looking for some Dexter cattle for a friend, Ed managed to stumble across a two year old female Oxford Sandy and Black free to good home. Bertha had been living on her own since she was weaned and, following her owner having a serious accident, had ended up on a farm near Leominster. They loved her, but had run out of space, so had to rehome her - this is where we stepped in. Ed collected her a few weeks ago and she seems to have settled in well, though she is (somewhat understandably) convinced she is a human not a pig and has been a little miffed at our attempts to a) keep her in a pen and b) introduce her to the boar!!



We have borrowed an Oxford Sandy and Black boar from a local farmer, nicknamed Bert who seems quite keen on Bertha. She is somewhat less keen on him. We're keeping our fingers crossed though. Neither of them are registered with the OSB Society so we will sell/keep their piglets as weaners for pork rather than keeping them for breeding.



Next up, Ed discovered the livestock equivalent of ebay and managed to procure two 13 month old Tamworth gilts for the princely sum of £11.54. Bargain. There's the small matter of feeding them, but we'll gloss over that for now... They are really friendly and lovely looking. Flynn is much more interested in them, and less afraid of them, than Bertha - I think it's because they're ginger like him! They have settled in really well (we've split the pen at our yard in two) and are very interested in Bert, so we're now looking for a Tamworth boar. Though I am keen to stagger the arrival of piglets a bit or I think we might be a little overwhelmed.



Finally, we went to look at a potential husband for Barley last week. He's a lovely, two year old, yellow labrador. So now we're just waiting for her to come in to season. It is so exciting, though not quite sure how we're going to cope with all the babies - still, it'll probably put us off having our own for a while!!

We have lift off!

Well, pigs anyway. The farming (well, perhaps smallholding would be more accurate at this stage, but there's no harm in being ambitious) operation is underway.

On Saturday afternoon we collected six Saddleback cross Landrace weaners. They're all 12 weeks old and from the same litter, not that you'd know from looking at them.



They had been living inside so it really lovely to see them exploring their surroundings - and getting used to electric fence...! We're going to keep them in the pen we built, which is about 25m x 25m for the next two weeks or so while they get used to us, and living outside etc and then move them to the woodland we're renting (more about that later).

The people we bought them from have been feeding them weaner pellets, about 1kg each per day, so we're keeping going with that for now even though they can forage outside as they will be using extra calories to keep warm. We'll keep an eye on this though and review as necessary. We're planning to weigh them before we move them so then we'll have more idea when they might be 'ready'.

The pig pen (a work in progress)

So, work commenced on the pig pen last Monday. We started with this:



(ok, this is a bit after we'd started as I've laid out the posts, but I forgot to take a photo right at the beginning!)

At lunchtime we had this:



And by the evening we had this:



(excuse the lightened photo, it was pretty dark by the time we'd finished)

So, we've got to put a gate in, which Ed is hoping to collect from my Mum this week, and add the electric fence holders and we're good to go, which is lucky really as we're hoping to get the pigs this weekend or next!

The pen is 25m x 25m approx. It's made from wooden posts and pig netting with barbed wire around the base on the outside. The electric fence will be run along the inside about six inches off the ground.