Last Saturday, Dave and I went to a neighboring town to pick out our piglets. We sold 1 pig (2 halfs) and are going to raise one for ourselves, and we decided to start slow, so we only got 2 little piggies this year. I didn't realize how small they would be - for some reason I was picturing lab-sized pigs, but these guys are 2 month old puppy-sized! They're also adorable: The girl pig is black with white feet - she's a Berkshire mix! The boy pig is black and white - he's a Hampshire mix! Because they're so tiny, they're living in our barn right now instead of outside - they need to get bigger, and the weather needs to get warmer before they can go out on pasture. They love their little house though: Their bedding is a layer of pine shavings covered in hay (they eat the hay too, but they also nest in it). There's a trough in one corner with grain and veggie scraps, and another corner has a nipple waterer, which they don't know how to use yet, so there's also a doggie bowl of water there. Piggies are actually very clean, and they chose the empty corner as their toilet - they pee and poop only in that corner, which makes it really easy to clean up after them! The barn smells like summer now thanks to the fresh hay, and it sounds "real" with the little grunts and snorts from the piggies. I love life :)
4 Comments
Kelly
4/4/2012 02:10:18 am
Can you really let them become food after seeing them..? Makes me want to become a vegetarian :(
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I gave up meat once - didn't last long. Dave eats meat with every meal (super healthy...). So I figure it's either raise our own meat, as difficult as it's going to be in the end, knowing they're going to get good lives and be healthy when they die. Or we can go to the grocery store and purchase "meat" that's mostly slime and bleach and (literally) crap, from animals that lived horrible lives. It's definitely not going to be easy, but I already feel really good about doing things this way.
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Kelly
4/4/2012 02:48:28 am
Good for you, lady. You're totally right. But I couldn't do it- I would end up with pigs sleeping in my bed. I very nearly broke down in tears when the lobster I picked out made a cute and funny gesture as the guy put him in the steamer at Hannaford :(
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AuthorJen & Dave Paul, owners & operators of Old Post Farm Archives
May 2013
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