Pay close attention to your breeding schedule. Separate your male and female hogs before they are 4 months old. At this morning’s feed we were quite surprised to find 10 new piggies snuggled up to Rachel, who has been penned by herself since the beginning of Feb.
Counting back 3-3-3…3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days, that puts her in close proximity to Sweetie’s offspring around mid Jan, when the males would have been just turning 6 months!
On Sunday Feb 4, 2018 Sweetie welcomed her second litter to the Bent Pine Farm Barnyard. One red and three black piglets joined the gang in the shady woodlot.
The hogs from Sweetie’s first litter are now six months old. Time to separate the girls from the boys. Adding two more hog panels gave us 5 pens, enough for now.
We kid ourselves that we are enclosing the little piglets, who root and dig their way out, squeezing under the fences. Running circles around the older more sophisticated geese, ducks, goats and their Dad, who likes to leisurely forage in the cool shade, they manage to squeeze back under the fence just in time for dinner.
Rachel had 9 piglets in Oct 2017, her first litter. They are typical American Guinea Hog colors – mostly black ones with some pink with black spots. Those are called “red” – go figure. They like to squeeze through the hog panel fencing and run around in the woods with Jack the Goat. Sadly, the smallest one was crushed while feeding. The Mom Pig has to roll over every 45 minutes when she nurses, to keep from going lop-sided. Rachel may have rolled over on the little one. Here are the rest: “Pigs at Home with Mom Rachel”
American Guinea Hogs are perfect for the small homestead. Full grown they usually top out at 150 – 200 lbs, not as heavy as regular hog breeds. They are quite easy to socialize. Even our “Big Daddy”, Alexander Behemoth, is quite docile.
The pigs are for sale, $40 each. We have males and females in two sizes – small and medium. Come by and visit … take a pig home!
Pay close attention to your breeding schedule. Separate your male and female hogs before they are 4 months old. At this morning’s feed we were quite surprised to find 10 new piggies snuggled up to Rachel, who has been penned by herself since the beginning of Feb.
