Thursday, April 16, 2009

Pigs!

Pigs are not my favorite animal, but it has been a pleasure taking care of our piglets this week. We got them at about five weeks, and by now they are almost two months old. They are getting bigger by the day. They (lucky pigs!) get to live in this sturdy, handmade A-frame, where I find all seven of them curled up in the back corner every morning. We built the A-frame with two pieces of corrugated metal roofing, screwed to three pieces of wood (you can just see the bottom one poking out on the left.) The entire back wall can be unscrewed in one piece and the two sides separated, so we can move the pigs relatively easily.

I would probably be curled up with my litter-mates, too, if I were a pig, because even though the days have been gorgeous and sunny, it's been cold enough to freeze their water every night. That's one of the reasons rubber boots are so essential. A few stomps and their water is free and clear. (Although even though we change it three times a day, it never stays clean. Pigs love sticking their faces in the mud!)Pigs love rooting. They've only been in this enclosure a little more than a week, and they've already uprooted all the grass. We're using them to reclaim this area. it is very wet, and full of shrubs and brush. As the pigs move down the strip, tearing everything out, we'll be able to much better manage the (hopefully) field. Later in the summer, we're going to fence them into a big section of scrubby woods at the end of one of our big pastures. Having them in there will help clear up some of the debris. Farmers are using pigs, and their innate love of sticking their face in the dirt, in some pretty cool ways.Eating, of course, is a very serious business with pigs, and just about anything will do. Which is convient for us, because, sharing a house with ten other people, Tupperware of beans, roasted root vegetables, and leftover mac n' cheese inevitably get forgotten in the back of the fridge and are discovered weeks later covered in mold. Luckily, we live on a farm, where practically nothing is wasted. The pigs eat up every last kitchen scrap we toss at them, and next fall, the new students will be eating bacon for breakfast.

1 comment:

Marcia said...

I love these pig pictures