Well, little Meyer, one of our meat pigs, wasn’t doing that well. He was the smaller of the duo, Oscar and Meyer and when Ebony came back, he was really the odd man out. Oscar is big enough that he got over Ebony’s tough exterior and just pushed his way into the food line. But Meyer was now getting bossed around by both Oscar and Ebony and he was not getting much food! Jessy started calling him skinny pig and unfortunately, the name fits!
We just couldn’t let that go on… So, we divised a quick and easy plan to separate Meyer from his hoggish pen partners and give him his own deluxe suite in the big barn. We had some chainlink panels from a dog kennel in there, but we found out that hogs can push through that pretty easily… (Ebony???? Bad girl…) So we had to buy a hog panel at the feed store. They are built tough and strong, welded wire and ready for hogs. Hence the name… hog panel.
Unfortunately, they come 16 feet long! So we took a measurement and our bolt cutters and we cut that bad boy off at 12 foot and lashed it on top of ol’ Blue. It was only hanging off the back a wee bit! We didn’t have too far to go.
Then we just removed the chainlink panel and popped this one in place. A little wire later and poof! New piggy stall for Meyer!
And if you can sort of make out… we just opened up the little gate on the left hand side of the above picture and I went in and grabbed ahold of the little skinny pig and pretty much hopped him out of the big pen. He then ran into the other pen and Jessy shut the panel up and wired it shut. If we need to go in there, we can, he’s really quite the scaredy pig.
I went in the house and made him a special welcome to your own room treat feast. A whole loaf of bread, 6 eggs, an old ear of corn, two yellow squash cut up, some potato peelings and a big dollop of black strap molasses with a half a quart of slightly aged milk. Hog heaven! He got it poured in his slop bucket and you never saw a more happy hog in your life! He was grunting and squealing, eating away, licking his chops and just feet first in his food and happy as you can imagine!
Ebony and Oscar grunted unhappily from the adjoining pen… watching and slightly annoyed. Hey, if they had been good pigs and shared, we wouldn’t have had to move him and they would be partaking in the delightful mash.
We will give him a little extra mash treat for a few days, get him back up to happy hog status. Along with his normal hog chow. We feel a little bad that he was loosing weight, and we didn’t notice right away. It’s amazing how fast they put on weight and also take it off! Oscar is getting quite big… just in the month that he’s been here. It’s pretty obvious that he gets his full share as well as a bit more!
Meyer will catch up. Even if Oscar ends up going to camp alone, we can always keep Meyer a bit longer so he can get to a good hanging weight. He’s a good pig…
And look at our little Ebony! Someone is starting to look a little tubby around the middle! I would have to say for certain that we’ll have piglets sooner than later! She’s about 6 weeks out, as our best estimate for farrowing. Maybe a bit more. We’ll be on piglet watch from about October 1st on. I’ve noticed that she’s been favoring that back corner of the barn, rooting about and testing the area for a nest spot. I’m going to get her a few straw bales so she can make herself a nice little secuded area. Oscar will be vacating the pen in another month or so. I’m hoping he can move back in with Meyer, once Meyer gets a growing time in. Or we’ll move Ebony into Meyer’s stall and move Meyer back with Oscar! Oh my… it’s always someone moving here and there! Adjustments are the name of the game!
Just found a cool pedigree and livestock tracking program and we’re giving it a spin to see if we like it. It’s called Kintraks and you can download it at www.Kintraks.com It’s a shareware database program. What I like so far is that you can create several different breed databases… so you can have goats and sheep and pigs and rabbits all in one place. I like that. Going to keep playing with it a bit, and see what we discover! How we like it and all that. Want to be ready when we have our first litter of little American hogs! We are going to name the first batch after presidents and first ladies! Each of our litters are going to have an American theme… like presidents, then capital cities, then national parks, then landmarks and so on! We thought that would be a fun way to mix it up. I know lots of people name in session based on the alphabet, but I think it would be more fun to have themes for litters and seasons. Like our lambs this year were all hillbilly names from the Foxfire books! Next year, they are going to be bluegrass musicians! I believe the year after we are considering Lord of the Ring names… The bunnies are all named after characters from video game series! Imagine that. Not sure about the goats yet…. Milk goats are going to be botanical names most likely and the angoras… Turkish names!
Should be fun! 
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