Winter Piglets

Well, I awoke yesterday to the forecast of snow and realized it was going to happen. Our Berkshire gilt - Black Betty - was going to farrow. After waiting around for a week and a half, the onset of winter weather was the perfect opportunity to give birth. Sure enough, she failed to show up for breakfast, and we began our final preparations.

With some extra straw and a heat lamp, we let Betty take over from there. Over the course of the day she farrowed five piglets, with four remaining this morning. Though this is a smaller number of piglets than we'd hope for, this is her first farrowing and they do tend to be small. All appear to be happy and healthy, however, and we're proud to announce the first Red Wattle / Berkshire heritage hybrid hogs from Ecotone!

Whiskey Pigs

Last week, David Wells and I went down to the new Corsair Distillery in Nashville to begin collecting their spent grain.  As you can see, all are enjoying the bounty.  The day after unloading this sweet smelling stuff, the sows were grunting with glee as they turned in circles around my feet.  I hope that finishing our hogs on this whiskey barley - in addition to acorns, goat's milk, and love - will provide some of the best pork you've ever had!

Piglet Zen

Nothing has taught me patience like farming, and nothing more so than living with pigs. On March 5th, a majority of the third and fourth litters of Red Wattle piglets left Ecotone.  While nine went with Andy Roddick of Blackbird Heritage Farm in Franklin, two went with Bill and Cynthia Trew of Trew Organic Farms in Ocoee, Tennessee.  

That morning, in preparation for their arrival, I began to wrangle the piglets.  Alone.  There was a steady, heavy rain as I rounded up the materials and my patience.  I sat cross-legged in front of a bowl of grain under an adolescent maple, my head bowed in dissimulation.  One by one they would approach, and one by one I would grab them by a single leg, wrap my arms around their entire body, and give it all I had to get them into the trailer. 

If you've never tried it and are so inclined, I cannot but recommend that you try wrestling wet, hungry piglets in the mud at least once in your life.  One of the litters was a month older than the rest, and while this may not look like much of a difference with four hooves on the ground, I can promise you in retrospect that that difference in age does indeed make a difference in weight.  At one point, having underestimated the size of a particularly large gilt, I initiated the contest and she pulled me - holding onto her two back legs - clear through the porcine soup.  Having at times been a competitive judo player, this young porker was not to have the best of me.  I held on, dressed now in the finest spring mud Tennessee has to offer, and won. 

But - besides being soaking wet, muddy, and taking all day - it all otherwise went off without a hitch.  Bill Trew and I traded piglets, with he bringing two very nice Berkshire gilts from his sounder in east Tennessee.  Thanks to Stella Hansen who named these newest editions to Ecotone.  Welcome Peggy Rae and Ellie Ann!  In the future, these girls will begin the experiments with hybrid heritage pigs, hopefully giving the gene pool some much needed diversity, as well as your pork chops some added agrarian vigor.

Morning Visitors

As I was heading out to feed the pigs this morning, I was instead greeted by a sounder of piglets at the back fence sniffing around for a pre-breakfast snack.

Ozark - a true lover of all things porcine, especially those in miniature - soon led the somewhat confused "herding" back to their mothers, who were awaiting with snorts of concern.

All of this reminds me of a fellow farmer friend's favorite quotation regarding such incidents, accidents, and their aftermaths:

"The Pig: mogul of appetite, lord of misrule, the king who must die."
- John Thorne, Serious Pig (2000)

Piglets 3

On Sunday December 5th, Jonathan and Hugh came over for the always fun chore of "working the piglets." And as is the case with most things on the farm, this second time around was much easier. After luring Sadie out of the farrowing hut, they blocked her re-entrance with an old door while I went in and quickly put the piglets in a carrier and made my way out the back.

The trick is to keep the piglets as close to the ground as possible while you're picking them up. When their feet are off the ground, they scream. When they scream, momma gets upset. When momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

While one piglet mysteriously disappeared on their second night, there are seven happy piglets remaining. Thus, out of Sadie's second litter there were 4 females and 3 males, with the ever-present runt being a male. We notched their ears and wormed them all, and castrated the males.

In other news, I've traded two gilts from this litter for two Berkshire gilts from Trew Organic Farms in Ocoee, TN. This will allow us to do some crossbreeding for hybrid vigor, which will be good for those hogs destined for the table, as well as have piglets for sale more regularly throughout the year. Out of this litter, though, we're keeping the rest to feed out for ourselves and several folks who have already indicated an interest. Ruby, however, is most certainly pregnant, as her milk began dropping early this week, and so I expect we'll have another litter very soon.

A Day Late, Plus Eight

On Monday, November 29th, Sadie gave birth to eight healthy piglets. Not wanting to disturb them too much, I lifted back the tarp covering their house only a little bit, so the resulting video is a little dark.

That morning, C.J. was in the process of getting the farrowing huts ready for the next round of piglets when he realized he hadn't seen Sadie yet that day, and that the other pigs were standing at the fence looking anxious. Realizing what was afoot, he went back into the woods where the pigs are eating this year's mast and - sure enough - Sadie was in labor with two piglets already having been born, under a nice oak tree and right next to several old, discarded tires.

With rain and freezing temperatures approaching within hours, the panicky new farmer began running around trying to figure out what to do. After first preparing to move mom and babies into the fancy farrowing huts he built for them, the plan changed; he now decided to take the hut to them. With the help of Jim and Jonathan Smith - the dynamic father-son neighbor duo that has helped C.J. so much over the last two years - they carefully lifted a lighter shelter over Sadie and her now seven piglets. They were then covered from the rain, just beginning to fall from the sky, and extensions cords provided the electricity for the heat lamps to ward off the chill from the night to come. The eighth soon followed.

Gilt-friend

The last piglet finally found a home! After several folks saying they wanted her but backing out, the final gilt from the first litter moved to Pink Guitar Farm in Bon Aqua, Tennessee. These lovely folks are transplants from California, moving to the glorious southeast for more space, one can only assume cheaper land, and, above all else, plentiful water. Last year, they also bought a pair Narragansett turkeys from us, which they still have and are hoping to raise poults from next year. Here's the gilt talking through the fence to her new boar-friend.

Rules of the Wrangle

Well, all but two of the piglets have made their way to new homes! Over the last two days, folks from as far away as Kentucky and North Carolina came to Ecotone to pick up these fine little hogs, some for breeding and some for feeding.

Of course, catching them in the field is easier said than done. After having several sessions of pure farm folly - picture us running around the pasture trying to catch them by hand - I came up with the idea of a trap constructed with T-posts and pallets. The first person to come by saw the trap function in all its glory. With one drop of the door, I caught all the piglets. The second attempt, however, did not go as well. Here are some rules for piglet wranglin' that I came up with in the hours after the first piglets left, trying to catch the rest.

1) Porcine Patience: Patience is the first rule for dealing with pigs. You cannot force pigs to do anything they do not want to do. Period. Pigs are intelligent. They understand what you're up to, especially if they've seen it before. Now I cannot speak to the capacity for long-term memory in pigs, but I do know that it lasts for at least several days. The second round of piglets were surely aware of what was going on, refusing to go into the trap and making themselves scarce in the bushes. By this time they had also had plenty to eat, and so were that much less inclined to cooperate.

2) Time of Day: If you must wrangle pigs, do so at dawn or dusk. Trying to convince them in the heat of the day, when it's not feeding time and when their preference is to wallow in the mud, is futile. Approach porcine when they're hungry and when it's cool.
3) Have a Plan: Do not simply start working with pigs without a plan. By the time our piglets left, they were a healthy 35 lbs. of pure muscle. If you grab one, have an idea about where you're going, and who's helping.

4) Do Not Attempt Alone: Following the previous rule, it is silly to try to work with piglets alone. The adult animals are slower, and know that you represent the Platonic forms of Corn and Soy. Piglets, however, see humans differently. To them we are unpredictable, strange, and scary. Though sometimes we show up with goodies too delicious to resist, often we show up with other, less pleasant, ends in view.

5) Respect the Sow: Most of these old-style pigs, raised outdoors on pasture, retain strong maternal instincts. Some even build elaborate nests of brush and sticks and whatnot. When attempting to retrieve piglets, treat the sows with the utmost respect. They weigh around 400 lbs. each, and are seriously committed to their piglets. Talk nicely, and try to explain what's going on. But if this doesn't work - and we all know reason has its limits - get the hell out of her way. No matter how sweet she is normally, liking her ears and belly scratched in the mud, when you're trying to get her babies, she's trying to get you. They go for your knees, and with a good bite could really do some damage. So respect her. Thank her. And you'll be back on her good side in a few days. With plenty of food.

Gleaners

Speaking of eating free, I'm happy to report that we're now participating in the Food Reclamation Project, a program organized through Hands On Nashville. Vendors at the Nashville Farmer's Market support the project by donating their "less-than-prime" produce (read: flawed, mostly superficially, thrown away due to our fickle industrial food aesthetic) to a group of volunteers who further sort it into human-grade quality and not. The former is then delivered to local feeding agencies and homeless shelters, while the lesser quality foodstuffs are reincorporated into the local agro-ecology.

Until recently, most of this food was directed to local community gardens for composting, which is one great way to remove organic material from the waste stream and put it back into the food cycle. Now, however, we are coordinating with the project to pick up this busted, bruised, and slightly moldy (but sometimes astonishingly perfect!) food two days a week for the Ecotone sounder. Last week, I could barely fit it all in my truck!
As you may know, pigs are remarkably similar to human in digestive anatomy. With single chamber stomachs they are omnivores, and are well-known for eating most anything and everything you put in front of them. This, of course, doesn't mean that they should or would eat those things, if given a wide variety from which to choose; but it is why they are traditionally considered unclean to eat. But it's also exactly why pigs were domesticated: because of their remarkable ability to turn all or most agricultural by-products into edible animal protein. Whether it was compost from the garden, whey from the dairy animals, or scraps from the kitchen, pigs are a crucial part of the feeding ecology for many smallholders and householders - that is, those subsistence agriculturists comprising three-quarters of the world's population.

In this sense, I've been thinking about how this project in general, and the pigs roles in particular, are good examples of gleaning, an ancient set of practices associated with the common rights to gather the remainder left in a field after harvest. Needless to say, all the pigs at Ecotone are happy to oblige in this role, and sometime in the future - after we've helped turn that so-called waste into protein - we'll return it to the project in the form of food.

Working the Piglets

Last Thursday, Ben from Pleasant View Mill came down to the farm and taught Jonathan, Jennifer, and I how to "work" hogs, which includes ear notching (for ID), worming (only as necessary), and, of course, castration. We worked the 8 piglets from Sadie's litter, of which there was one female and seven males. We castrated all but two of the biggest males, and so have one gilt, two boars, and five barrows for sale out of that litter.

We also tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Ruby to let us do the same with her litter. As I was sealing her in the farrowing hut to gather the piglets without being killed by an angry sow, she jumped out over the top, screaming like a dinosaur the whole time! Needless to say, it was sort of scary, both because she was clearly upset, and I was afraid of her hurting herself. Once out, however, she barked loudly, calling her piglets together, and off they went into the bush for a full day and a half before I saw them again. We plan to try again in a few days. Of the six piglets in this litter, I know from observation that there are at least two gilts, maybe three, and we'll castrate at least one of the males.
If you're interested in getting a piglet out of this litter, please do consider sending a deposit soon, as they're going fast! For feeders, please send $50 per hog as a deposit, with the remaining $50 due at pick-up. For breeders, please sent $100 per hog as a deposit, with the remaining due at pick-up. The prices for breeder quality stock are $250 for gilts, and $350 for boars. I am interested in trading piglets for unrelated stock as well.

Sire for Hire

A few days ago Rambo embarked on his new career as porcine stud. A new farmer friend from Chapmansboro came down with a trailer and some goat's milk to see if Rambo might be interested in taking a ride to meet her Duroc sow, Mackenzie. With patience at first and then a firm shove, sure enough Rambo was interested. Here are some photos Dani sent of him taking a breather after the trip, and of his new mate. We're hoping to get some good hybrid vigor off of this pairing, which given her looks seems likely.

Piglets 2

I noticed yesterday that Sadie didn't eat her breakfast, and sure enough by sunset she farrowed 11 piglets! This morning I found one dead, though not apparently laid upon, and couldn't find yet another. Jen went out a little bit later and found a piglet shivering by the hay bale outside the hut. I must have walked right by it. But that makes 10 healthy piglets in Sadie's first litter.

Piglets!

Last night Ruby became a sow, farrowing 8 piglets by dawn, with 7 6 still living! Though I haven't counted exactly, they look to be mostly males, which would confirm an old saying that early litters are large and mostly female, while late litters (as this one seemed to be) are small and mostly male. Here's a video and some photos Jen got this morning.

Pig Shots 2

Here are some recent photos of Ruby and Sadie, which are due to farrow any day now, and Rambo, who is now available as a sire for hire. Ruby (Reg. # 1833):

Sadie (Reg. #1834), with a photo of the new farrowing huts:
And Rambo (Reg. #1869):

Porcine Love!

At dusk I was heading out to close up the hens and gather eggs when I topped the hill and saw a hog's head above the high brush. Looking closer, Rambo had mounted. I approached slowly and waited, and can confirm the successful copulation of Rambo and Sadie. Three months, three weeks, and three days until piglets (that's May 13th)!

Welcome Rambo!

On January 12th, the newest permanent resident of Ecotone arrived: a fine young boar named Rambo. Like Ruby and Sadie, he is a Red Wattle hog -- a heritage breed esteemed for their pork and their ability to perform well on pasture -- and soon enough we hope he will become the father of piglets. In the video below, you can see that he is significantly smaller than the two ladies, but also that he's becoming friendly with them (at least enough that they let him sniff their piss).