Monday, July 21, 2014

Pregnant Pigs

Another hot humid weekend in central FL.  It was nearly unbearable.  But, very little gets in our way when completing projects.  This weekend, due to all the rain, we had nearly a foot or more of rain at The Compound in the last couple of weeks, we were shown where we've fallen short for our animals.  It was a muddy, wet mess.  Yes, pigs like muddy wallows, but they need dry ground.  It's hard to keep anything dry with that much rain, but we needed to make the effort.

The boar pen needed a larger shelter, for shade and rain protection.  The guys spent a good part of Saturday getting that up.  It was less than 30 seconds after they left the area, that young boars all found a spot and took a nice long shaded nap!

Our pregnant gilts, one in particular is really showing.  I'm guessing she's very close to delivering.  But we definitely have two in the final stages.  We built a farrowing pen last week, and finished a second this weekend.  We may need to build a third this coming weekend. 


The coolest part of my weekend;  rubbing this girls belly and feeling the little piglets moving around!  It was awesome!  She's never let me rub her belly before, but I'm thinking she's seen me with a couple of the others and figured, my belly hurts maybe this crazy lady is on to something!  She was very content.



We will also be adding additional shelter from sun and rain for the gilt enclosure.  That's for this coming weekend.

6 comments:

  1. MMMM Little Bacon bits incoming :)

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  2. Izzy,

    Rain will always show us where we need to adjust, and make things better when it comes to our critters.

    Looks like you have your hands full with the upcoming new piglets coming. I can't wait to see pictures of the new little ones.

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    1. We can hardly wait to see the little ones ourselves! Everyone is on labor watch!

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  3. I can't imagine that much rain! I woke early this a.m. to the sound of rainfall -- a sound that has eluded us of late. I'm thankful for it, though, as I love the smell of a good rain and how it clears the air. Exciting about your porkers! Will you be selling any piglets or raising them all?

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    1. I think we'll be doing a bit of both. We have more girls in the "family way" than we really wanted. Much of it will depend on how many we actually end up with. I busy reading all I can on farrowing pigs. I'm a city girl at heart, so this is all very new to me.

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