New pig owner here

oldmomster

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Just brought home two Berkshire barrows yesterday, went looking for info on what to expect and found this site.....so much good information!

Currently we have 3 horses, one very aged Border Collie, 10 Rhode Island Red chickens, 25 chicks that are a cross between a White Rock and Rhode Island Red, and now our two ventures into raising pork.

There's lots of info online for 'commercial' growers and how to run your pork business, but very little in the way of what to expect on a very very small scale. I was glad to find you, expect to be reading every day.
 

Latestarter

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Greetings and welcome to BYH from NE Texas. We have a number of hog owners here and some really great hog "experts" to help out when issues come up. I would have been a hog owner, but mine climbed out of the trailer recently during transport and flew away :hit By all means, browse around the various forum threads and "meet" some of our great folks through their posts. :D If you have questions, just post away. Normally someone will get back to you pretty quickly.

Please consider putting at least a general location of where you are, in your profile... If you ask for advice, the first thing most folks will need to know is where you're located. Deep south hog care is a bit different than northern exposure hog care. Make yourself at home!
 

oldmomster

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Thanks for the welcome - getting my new animals settled today, but plan on updating my profile tomorrow. By the way, I'm in northeast PA, the Lehigh Valley. Not too many pigs here in this area....mostly horses and cows.
 

NH homesteader

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welcome from NH! We have Old Spot cross pigs, goats, chickens (Dominiques mostly) and heritage turkeys.
 

OneFineAcre

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We just took the last of our 3 barrows to the slaughter house this morning.

I found that just finishing some feeder pigs for meat is pretty easy.

The biggest issue we had was getting the last one to go on the trailer.
 

norseofcourse

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Welcome from Ohio! Quite a few people here doing small scale pig raising, they've even got me considering it, someday... What made you choose Berkshires?
 

oldmomster

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Berkshires were one of the breeds recommended for small homesteads...and the meat is supposed to be darker and tastier than other breeds. So far, I've enjoyed raising animals so much more than growing things, though it makes getting away for any significant time pretty difficult.
 

NH homesteader

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Same here! I try to like gardening...I'm going to work on enjoying it more this year, lol! But I love the animals!

I've heard Berkshires are fantastic, never raised any myself.

What kind of turkeys did you raise? We have a turkey hen sitting on eggs right now. Really hoping she can get the job done!
 

oldmomster

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We had five broad breasted white turkeys. They were really easy to care for until the very end, when they started fighting.

I had planned on getting a few again this year, but decided I liked the chickens so much better...and I just love going out there to get my eggs.
 
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