Arrowti's journal - backyard farm!

arrowti

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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! :D She is a mulefoot/tamworth/duroc mix.
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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!
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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!
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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!
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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.
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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!
 

Poka_Doodle

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This is very interesting. I'm small going to raise some Cornish Cross but only 25.
 

arrowti

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Cornish are tasty but as they grow, ration their feed or they will likely suffer heart attacks and/or broken legs.. they never stop eating. And pooping.

I've never raised turkeys but I do like turkey meat more than chicken meat!
 

Latestarter

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Sounds like quite the farm! I'll be following along to enjoy the input :D If you can catch all those loose piglets, it's just more for your bottom line down the road. Whoever owned them obviously didn't care for them very well if they all escaped and nobody has claimed them...
 

arrowti

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No update on the stray piglets. No new sightings in town, so they're probably out in the woods away from people.

Today started nice, ended rough. All the chicks are doing good, no deaths. Which is rather unusual, knowing cornish cross.. we usually lose 1 or 3 chicks early on, with such a large order. Won't knock it, but hopefully it doesn't mean they're going to be sick later on (if it can go wrong, it usually does).

Wilma is still 'guarding' her territory from Bell's piglets and chases them off. I noticed she mostly chases off the castrated males and just stares at the females. She hasn't chased the injured female with a limp but she does huff at her as if to tell her to 'leave' because Gimpy gets up and runs away. She doesn't hurt them. She just makes lots of noises and runs at them but is careful when she does it.

I've noticed today, watching Pebbles try to play with Bell's litter... how HUGE she is. She is a pure mulefoot, who grow slowly... and Bell's piglets are part Tamworth. But she's bigger than almost all of Bell's piglets and looks so much stronger.

Last time: Wilma had her litter of 6 a week before Bell had her litter of 9, and Bell's piglets were born the size Wilma's 6 were at a week old. We just brought Bell's first litter to slaughter on Monday, and Wilma's first litter still has a month+ to go! Just as a size comparison. So Pebbles is spoiled rotten and getting tons of food! She uses her mother to scratch all her itches... especially her nose!

The trouble started later... One of our young boars somehow escaped the pen - no wires down, no holes, no sign of digging underneath. He just got through. Maybe he jumped 4 feet (haha). Anyway, he ended up in the pen where our mulefoot feeders are (Wilma's first litter), and Ginger is. Caught him mating with his half sister (grrr!) and hopefully no others before then before we managed to chase him out and into a new pen. Hopefully she doesn't get pregnant by the time she's supposed to be sent in.

We're trying to get all 3 young boars into their own pen when they go in in May. We've got two of the three in and they are fighting a lot, but the third is in with Fred and Fred keeps chasing him away from the fence (from us). Maybe he likes his buddy...

As of now, all ducks and chickens are locked in for the night. Hopefully tomorrow has less.. surprises! No more pigs escaping, for one.

Oh yeah, we're getting a guinea pig tomorrow! Someone bought one from their daughter but it seems the daughter is more interested in her phone than her pet, so she's giving it and all its housing/materials to us to take care of. Never raised a guinea pig, so I'm excited! :D
 

samssimonsays

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Congrats on the guinea pig I know you'll enjoy it! Keep it away from draft I areas and in a well traveled area of the house (they are super social once they settle in) and they thrive.. I miss mine so much but sadly am allergic now.

Sounds like a chaotic day for all today! Hope it mellows out for you
 

arrowti

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The sun has gone down yet again!

Today, we finally managed to separate all 3 boars into one pen. The biggest one is the meanest one but they've settled down for now.

Pebbles is fighting a bit with the other piglets, and ended up picking a fight with the wrong one! Two bloody ears later and she went and hid under Wilma. She's been picking on the smaller ones so she probably deserved it. It's too bad we couldn't co-mingle them earlier on, would've kicked most of the 'fighting' out before. That male in particular is a bit aggressive even with his own littermates, so we're keeping an eye on him.

Wilma has mostly given up on chasing out the other piglets, since they're quick and run in circles all over the place. She just sighs, walks away and lays down. Pebbles always curls up at her belly. I feel bad for Bell's piglets. She doesn't let them sleep with her and always pushes them away when they try. The closest they can get is to nurse, when she decides to let them. She doesn't show any sign of worry when they squeal in pain from fighting or getting zapped on the fence. Grr!

Our guinea pig has spent most of the day hiding in her little cave spot. She is still nervous but tonight she is finally coming out and exploring, though usually stares at us nervously when she sees us. She is eating and drinking right now. She's a white guinea pig with a splotch of grey on her head. The picture I have isn't great, because she keeps hiding!

Looks like she was sticking her tongue out at me.
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When it comes to hay... we get hay from another farmer for our pigs and ducks bedding, but I'm not quite sure if it's the 'same' as the 'timothy' hay that they're supposed to eat. We got a bag from the former owners but it has just about enough for one night, so we're wondering if we just buy it at Petsmart or something or if we can use the same hay we give our pigs and ducks.

One senior cat thinks she's fun to look at, but the bars are too thin for his paws to get through. He might be feeling like hunting but she's safe in there. She's about 6 months old. The former owner called her Cupcake... I might change that name (I don't like it haha). She's really energetic right now that we're giving her the stuff in the bag of hay/mix of forage.

That's all for today. :)
 

Ferguson K

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Wow! Just got caught up. I'm surprised that little gilt made it with little complications.
 

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