Oh baby !

Last night was an eeire and weird sort of night. Rolling clouds, bright full moon, breezes too warm causing the midlife farmwife to swoon. Sorry.  The last time I "swooned"  was 1975 and I'm pretty sure it was not romance related.

So, the sky was very Fall like, but last I looked it was still February in Central Illinois. Something is up, I thought.

This morning when Keith did chores he found this wonderful sight

Our crossbred sow Dot with her FOURTEEN piglets ! She looks very comfy and satisfied doesn't she ? I always had my babies just ONE at a time and I know I never looked this good after delivery. She farrowed in one of the custom made hutches Keith custom made this past summer. Its a great design with plenty of room for mom and babes and an area in the back that babies can snuggle into but remain safe from mom accidentally lying on them.

See the boards (two 2x4's nailed together) behind Dot ? And the way the hutch roof angles towards to bottom of the hutch.? Both these measures help decrease losses due to crushing. Those and the fact that mom can come in and out of the hutch as she pleases with lots of room to roam outside. Ideally we would have them farrowing in the woods, if we had any woods, but we do not so we do the best we can with the pasture and the hutches we have. With each version of this farrowing hutch Keith tweaks a part of the design and our survival rates improve. Another decade or so and we'll have this hog raising thing licked...chewed ? Smoked ?

Ooops. I forgot to thank Mad Maxx our Red Wattle Boar and daddy to these piglets. What a great job he did of passing down his Red Wattle coloring. Tomorrow we'll count wattles.

Fritz, we hardly knew ye.

January 1, 2009

Yesterday when I started to bed our 5 big hogs I noticed our boar Fritz was not moving. Upon closer inspection (I am an experienced nurse you know) it became obvious he was not breathing. Dead as a 500 pound doorknob. Sad. I was instantly sad. We had only owned Fritz and his farm mates Debbie and Anna for 2 months but they had all grown on us. Really, they all got bigger AND we had started to feel affection towards them. The cause of his death is at this time unknown. He was found in the middle of the group of five as if they were all keeping him warm. He looked as if he just passed on in his sleep. Heart attack ? He had not been ill, had not been off feed. He was only a year and a half old. He had suffered a little stress lately with the photo I posted of his backward breeding style but he seemed to understand it was just in good fun.

Seriously, Keith and I do take our animal husbandry seriously and although we understand that animals have life expectancies just like humans, we feel responsible when an animal dies unexpectantly. What did we miss ? What could we have done differently ? His prior owner told us that Fritz had been attacked by a coyote this past summer and nearly died, perhaps it was a complication related to that. (See the scar on his right thigh, he is the hog on the far left of the pic above. ) I've got some research to do. In the meantime we are hopeful that the four sows that ran with Fritz are bred so we'll have some little piggies to help us remember our first Red Wattle Boar.

Our new hog shed is almost complete and our remaining four large sows will be moved to the front east acres this next week. Too bad Fritz will not be part of that new adventure.

That leaves us with ONE Red Wattle Boar. Mad Max age 4 months. I'm thinking we should bring him into the house to protect the breed. There is a lot riding on that little guys shoulders.