Making the most of what I have
When moving any pigs between pens, I’ve learned that advanced preparation and patience are the 2 most important aspects. The more pigs that are being moved then the harder the task will be – especially is they don’t all follow the leader!
Over time, our Tamworth pigs have learned the various routes they may travel so it becomes easier but there is still always one that gets distracted and doesn’t follow the rest…
this is how we do it
After 10 years of keeping Dexter cattle, it seemed like a good point to make a change and sell them on to someone else. There were only 2 cows with recently born calves, we never kept large numbers of cattle due to the limited grazing space available here
This has the advantage that we can rest our land for 6 months or more while we consider the options for the future
That may be more cattle again but from another breed or might even just mean that we rent out the grazing land to a neighbouring farmer for their sheep
Taking the time to decide on the best option seems like a good thing to do!
After disappointing results with the litters from Dora in January and Beryl in February, I was keeping my fingers crossed for Betty with our final litter of Spring 2024
Initially everything seemed to be positive and I was able to monitor Betty via our camera so that I could leap into action when she started to farrow.
It was fairly clear that she was building up to something and she eventually started to farrow around 3am on Mon 25 March. We don’t get too many farrowings that happen at a reasonable hour but I’m used to the situation now
Over the course of the next few hours Betty delivered a litter of 8 piglets – 4 boars and 4 gilts. The heat lamp did it’s job with keeping the new born piglets warm for the first period and I restrict them to that area initially.
Once they’d all perked up and dried off plus Betty had finished moving around so much while farrowing then I was able to encourage the litter to suckle.
Some were a smaller than others but that’s not too unusual. All seemed well and I was able to leave them at that point so I could get on with my day job
However over the following week a combination of problems meant that we lost nearly all of this litter. Partly due to Betty lying on a few (perhaps they were not nimble enough) and also it soon became clear that Betty didn’t have a lot of milk.
Sadly she now has just a single piglet with her but hopefully her limited amount of milk will all be taken by this little one.
Just in case the milk from Betty isn’t enough or gets any worse, I am also bottle feeding this remaining piglet at intervals through the day. I will eventually try to get it drinking from a tray or bowl but the first priority is to make sure it gets some nutrition
Definitely not the outcome I’d hoped for or expected but all eventualities are possible and it’s a timely reminder that sometimes we don’t get what we wanted despite all our efforts!
As always, the arrival of spring here in the North Pennines is a little later than the areas further south of us. Of course, that also means we’re slightly ahead of those areas that are even further north of us but it’s hard to imagine an even shorter growing season than we get here.
The area that I set aside for raised veg beds back in 2014 has had a chequered time over the years with a constant running battle with our local rabbit population.
At the last count, I now have 3 layers of protection ranging from some old wire garden fencing with some added chicken wire and finally some leftover weld mesh from when we assembled our chicken run.
I don’t want to get ahead of myself just yet but I think I may just have got those pesky rabbits beaten at last
Although we have 4 compost bins and they are pretty much ready to be spread, there just wouldn’t have been enough to top up all the raised beds. That meant it was time to turn to the local compost supplier for a delivery.
Within a few days the 3 bags were quickly reduced to just one full bag and a bit left in another. That was all the raised veg beds topped up plus half a dozen potato sacks part filled with compost too.
Any remaining compost left now will be used to fill gaps as the growing season progresses and also it will help to earth up the potato crop later this year
This time around we moved Beryl into the farrowing shed a few days ahead of the expected date but as it turned out she didn’t want to wait that long. More likely my calendar calculations could have been better I guess
Either way I didn’t check on her overnight into Friday because I expected another days wait but as it turned out she had a large litter and she lost most of them. When I checked her first thing in the morning she just had 2 live piglets and one of those wasn’t looking too good
The weakest piglet was immediately placed in a box of straw with a hot water bottle to raise the body temperature. The heat lamp hadn’t been on overnight so we needed to do something while that could warm things up
Luckily the warmth made all the difference and within an hour or so I was able to put the piglet back under the heat lamp with the stronger one. A nervous few hours later it was clear that both piglets were doing okay so I could breathe a small sigh of relief.
As with previous litters, we’ve found that Beryl is a really good mother and also (happily for me) very clean while she’s confined in the shed with little ones.
This saves on the workload when cleaning out the shed because we can let her out of the farrowing area to do her toilet, eat her breakfast and stretch her legs.
Sadly not all pigs are like this and some seem to take great delight in peeing on their beds, often quite soon after the straw has been replaced!
As with previous first time mothers I’ve had, I wasn’t sure what to expect when Dora moved into the farrowing shed ready for her time.
She’s a very friendly pig and easy to move as she happily follows a bucket full of feed. However maybe she wouldn’t like being confined in the shed even though that meant being out of the winter weather.
In the end she delivered a small litter of which only 2 survived – a boar and a gilt – but she showed excellent mothering instincts. The piglets did well right from the start which can be a concern in case a first time mother doesn’t have strong instincts when presented with little ones
We really enjoy keeping the pygmy goats and learning about their care. One of our original goals was to experience goat keeping in a manageable way and, given their size, this approach has been ideal for us.
Goats aren’t particularly difficult to keep but they do have distinctly different requirements from our pigs. We’d previously not had any livestock that needed such regularly care – for example, hoof trimming every 5-6 weeks!
However, more recently it became clear that there just wasn’t enough time for everything we’ve taken on. This was particularly troubling when considering the different breeding animals that would be needing proper attention and I wasn’t happy that we could do everything to a good enough level
When considering that we would have had pigs farrowing at around the same time as our first experiences with goat kidding, I just wasn’t comfortable that I could devote enough time and attention to everything
Sadly the decision has been taken that the pygmy goats have to go but, as luck would have it, the breeder who supplied them was happy to take them back so they could continue specific bloodlines.
This was our first time taking pigs to the Wolsingham Show but I’d heard good things about it and wanted to make sure that the Tamworth breed was represented at the show.
We’d only ever been to one day shows before and this was a 2 day show over a weekend so I wasn’t sure how the pigs (or myself) would cope. As it turned out I needn’t have worried because we all coped very well
Thankfully the weekend did not involve any showing or judging of the pigs so there was a lot less to worry about than our trips to the Northumberland show.
Beryl proved yet again that she is a good mother by delivering a litter of 10 piglets this time. She even managed to cleverly keep the numbers even with 5 boars and 5 gilts.
It’s quite a sight to see them all jostling for position under the heat lamp but they’re all doing really well which is a great sight to see
This time around we took Elsie as the most senior sow, Beryl who is Elsie’s daughter and also our most recent addition Dora that we kept on from Doris’s litter last year
They all behaved impeccably although Elsie did get very grubby because she enjoyed digging up the fresh grass in her show pen. She still got a second place rosette for her class though!
As usual, it was an excellent day out for all concerned plus a great way for the public to meet our Tamworth pigs and find out more about them
