Maggie bought her dog a bed. And as you can see, he is one happy, happy pooch!
He won’t even share with Evee! Which really toasts her bread, if you know what I mean.
He KNOWS it’s HIS bed. And he ain’t sharing.
I do believe we will have to be bringing him food and water because he hasn’t hardly left the thing for about 24 hours.
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Meet Raven… he’s a lovely Windhaven Maranucana rooster, and he’s about 3 years old now. His mother was a Amerucana and his dad was our Bucka Roo, a French Blue Copper Maran.
He was born in the late winter before we knew that chicks hatched inside, late in the year, don’t usually have a very good success rate. So he and a few of his mates made it and we raised them in a heated little brooder box on our screen porch. They got a lot of attention and handling, so that made them all very tame. The girls went on to new homes, and Raven, well, he went to a new home as well, because at that time, we thought he was a girl! He was mostly jet black, with these beautiful feathers that gave him the glow of a lovely raven, hence his name. When his family learned that he was a rooster, reluctantly, he had to come back to the homestead. I didn’t mind too much, I had actually grown very fond of the fellow.
Raven is a funny roo, he’s really pretty low on the pecking order of free range roosters here, and believe it or not, he prefers to bunk down with the hogs. They respect each other and he gets a great place to sleep and be safe, as well as much crack corn and lost pig chow to eat! He is right there in the midst of the feeding whenever we give the hogs their chow! I’ve warned him that pigs will occasionally make a late night snack out of a chicken, but so far, neither hog nor fowl have done anything to make an end to their relationship.
I noticed that Copper, our first hatched roo son of Bucka Roo, has started to bunk with his half brother, Raven. Copper is getting older, and less attractive to the ladies of late. They are much more enamored with the youngsters Dammartin and Bucka Too… Bucka Roos’s last two sons. Such is the way with farm studs. It’s usually a fairly brief time in the limelight of desire. I’m definately going to gather up spring eggs and raise up some grandsons of Bucka Roo…. he was our first rooster and much loved… he has offspring all over the area! So many of his baby eggs were raised by friend’s broody hens that I think a family reunion would be pretty amazing! And to think he and his ladies were rescued from a Chinese restaurant owner at auction! Fate stepped in and now we have our famous roosters! I love that…
Well, Raven is quite the character and still likes to sit on your lap if you can catch him. He used to come and volunteer to visit, but the years as a free range fellow and being picked on by the other roos, makes him a little less eager to volunteer for attention. Still, it’s still nice that once caught he will hang out for a good long time, especially if you talk to him and stroke his beautiful colorful neck and back feathers! He is just amazing in the sunlight… So beautiful!
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Cheyenne says Hello!
These American Guinea Hogs are just the coolest pigs around. We just love our little porkers. Right now we just have Ebony and her daughter Cheyenne here at the homestead. Our boar, Onyx, is due home shortly, but he’s in quarantine from being at a friends farm for a few months entertaining her ladies! Just a day or two shy of two weeks and he can be back here at the fold and hopefully creating a pair of litters for us in the spring! Cheyenne is old enough now to be a mom, she’s actually 14 months old. It’s recommended for AGHs to wait until they are a year old. Considering that she might not cycle right away, she might even be closer to 15 months when she conceives and then about 19 months when she delivers. That is perfect, in my book!
With hogs, it really is in their nature to have litters on their own schedules, since it helps with their body systems and such. If you let a gilt go too long, without a litter, she can start to have difficulty conceiving. We are eager to have piglets again in the spring, they are just adorable and a good help to our budget! We have now had two litters, resulting in 10 piglets, 9 of which have been sold and are out there helping to make more American Guinea Hogs! That is a good thing for these endangered heritage hogs!
If you are wondering… Even though Cheyenne and her mom, Ebony are obviously related, Onyx is not Cheyenne’s dad. So no one is related. Her dad is Harry, another friend’s boar where Ebony came from. It’s a little weird, I guess, since Cheyenne kind of thinks of Onyx as her step dad, but well, in the livestock world, steps don’t mean anything when it comes to the hokey pokey!
With the sheep wooing each other, we shall soon have wooing hogs as well!
Now, if we could only get the darn rabbits to breed!!!
(Yes, we are sorry to say, we are dreadful rabbit breeders. I know everyone says rabbits are so easy but I have to tell you, Angora rabbits seem to have some issues! I dunno… we are just not having any good luck with bunny babies of late! We are going to give it a good try again and hope for some spring bunnies!)
In the springtime we hope to build a new hog enclosure, nice and sturdy with more room for all the little pigs! We are going to also build another hog area for our feeder hogs, from these spring litters. We hope to raise a few AGHs for our own needs, instead of selling all the babies! And that will give our pair of breeding sows more room to have later summer litters if they choose. AGHs can easily have two litters a year, or in about 14 months. We like to have our breeding trio, a boar and two sows and then let everyone co-parent the litters. We have read over and over that this is a wonderful and natural way for the hogs to exist. We saw both litters doing fine last year that way… In fact, the retained gilts from the first litter, Cheyenne and Shawnee, were great helpers for the second litter!
Our pig pen will have hog panels instead of wire fence, which if you see in the above pictures is not the best for piggies! They are very strong and very determined to mess with stuff. We are going to dig a little trench around the perminiter of the hog pen and put some concrete rubble in it, to help discourage digging. And the corners and middle posts will be deeply set round posts with concrete! I can’t wait… we have adapted this ramshackle little pen and house over the last couple years and it’s served us well, but it’s just not the look we are trying for in our homestead! It would be wonderful to have everything beautiful and just like one of Martha’s fine farms but the reality it, we have to do things in phases and this spring will be the pig pen expansion phase! Their house is wonderful and just perfect for them. Just the yard needs a little help!
All in all, we just love our American Guinea Hogs! If you are interested in talking with us more, you can email me at: sherri@chekal.com and I would love to talk more about these awesome little hogs!
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