As you might have seen on our facebook page, Miss Ebony has had her litter of little piggies!
We are so excited about them… they are doing great! 6 little girls!
We’ve been a little behind in photos and bog posts, but I’m going to try and get all caught up this weekend! Fall is a very very busy time around our little homestead. It’s a race to get things done outside before the really cold weather hits. So far, it’s been wonderful… high in the 70’s and a reasonable 45-50 at night. But it’s not going to last long. I’d say we have another week or so before we really start seeing some cold temperatures move in.
But we’ve been taking pictures and all, so you’ll get the whole story, if maybe just a little bit delayed!
We made the decision to move the chickens outta the lil’ coop and into the now empty poultry barn. Having an empty coop that was nicer and bigger just seemed like a waste. Since we’ve decided to downsize our chicken and egg production a bit for awhile, and we really needed to find a good home for Ebony and her babies, it really seemed that the lil’ coop was a perfect solution!
So Maggie got to cleaning it out good and removed all the chicken dressings. It didn’t take too long, but about three days really. She did a wonderful job.
Once it was all done, she got out some of our old mis-tinted paints and began to get the nursery all ready to go! Miss Ebony is one spoiled pig!
The poor thing! Talk about expectant mom! She was pretty much miserable. Or well, determined to take a lot of naps!
Even though our feeder pig Oscar was gentle with her, it was still a good idea to seperate them sooner than later. If she had the babies late some night, there was a fear that he might hurt them since he’s a pretty big boy too. Or that Ebony might get nasty with him and well, just not a good idea. Guinea Hogs are good with co parenting, but we weren’t sure about Durrocks…
Our only expense in rehabbng the lil’ coop was to add some strong hog panels to the outside yard, along the fence. It was designed for chickens, not rooting hogs. Jessy was really good at hauling the panels out there! We cut them in half, the long way, so they were 16 foot by 2 foot high, instead of the normal 4 foot tall. Since there is fencing in the pig yard, I rather doubt that she would be able to jump the two foot and then tangle with the existing fence. It was just to keep her from pushing out under the old chicken fence. And it works great!
Once it was all painted, we installed an inner panel gate so that we would be able to step into the house if it was raining or nasty out. And the way we designed it, the panel pushes inward when we want to come into her area, but if she pushes on it, it just gets wedged into the wall harder. It’s really perfect and simple engineering! We love it. And it works great for her.
She was so easy to move over to her new little suite. We just had a bucket of sweet feed and she just nicely followed us over, like she had been waiting all this time for her own house! She is really the nicest hog.
Maggie got her all settled in with fresh bedding and a heat lamp for when the babies come. Little piglets have trouble adjusting their body heat for the first couple days, so we want to make sure they stay nice and warm if they need it. Been reading up and learning all about pig births, we’re so excited! And you can see, Ebony is ready for her babies!!!
Pin It