New Piggie and Barn doors finally mounted

Well, another hectic weekend here on the farm!  I have been looking around for a purebred Berkshire hog for a little while now and finally found some for sale in Chillicothe Ohio.  My wife wanted to do a little shopping at the world market in Columbus for the holidays and Columbus is between here and where we got the new pig so we made a big trip out of it!

This is my two year old son Saturday morning before we left getting ready to go spend the day at grandma and grandpa's farm.  He kept pointing at the Carhartt patch and saying Carhartt!! 

I was planning on doing this last weekend, however, due to a change in my work schedule I had to cancel and found out Friday that I was able to still get my new pig so we headed out early yesterday morning.  We made several stops and finally made it to the pig farm around 2pm.

The farm had quite a few and my wife and I were walking through the shed looking at them when the perfect looking little girl came walking up!  We immediately made our choice and loaded her up!

Our plan is to have a Berkshire x Tamworth cross.  Both are heritage breeds from across the seas and both are excellent for a natural raised pasture based farm.  Berkshires, as I found out from my wife, are considered the best tasting pig hands down in Japan due to their excellent flavor.  By crossing the two we should end up with very vigorous growing pigs that will excel on our grass based feed system!

Moving on, we finished up our trip when we arrived at home at 9pm, thirteen hours and 450 miles later than we departed.  I immediately found out that I needed to go out to salt at 2 am.  So I quickly got the pig and the truck unloaded and fed everything and headed in to take a nap.  After three hours of sleep I was headed out again for salting.  Nothing major just some touch up where things froze over during the night.  Then back home for a 30 minute nap before the kids got up and kept me awake.

After a quick breakfast and much needed coffee I drew up the revised plans for the cow shed incorporating in a neat feature I saw at the farm we had just visited.

This is their chute they use to load and unload pigs and also to vaccinate and treat the animals.  I decided to add something like this to my new barn plans!  Should work awesome!

Everyone here is battling a pretty bad cold/chest cold so I headed out by myself to the barn.  Steven brought the grinder over to make another batch of feed as we were out.  Before making feed we first had to mount the barn doors I had built for the pig shed as they were blocking access to where the hay is for the pig feed.  I built these doors the two days my truck was broken down as I had downtime to do so. 

We managed to get both mounted and they are looking great.  I simply need to add my rubber flaps to the bottoms and they are finished other than paint.  The rubber flaps are my idea.  I needed a way to accommodate the slope of the ground as well as the build up of bedding over the winter without freezing in or getting stuck.  This short one is on the pasture side.  I need to lower the gate two inches so the door will clear it and the flaps will hang down to stop the wind while still allowing the pigs to come and go as needed.  I will be painting everything next summer after all construction is completed so it matches.

  We got the feed ground and everyone fed and cleaned up and closed up.  All I have left is to get our donkey, who's name is officially Mario, a hay rack and train him to use the pig waterer and
we are ready for winter!


Almost forgot to put in a pic of the new pig box I built in the evenings this week.  It is 4'x4'x30" and is light enough to lift by hand yet heavy enough that it doesn't move around in the bed of the truck.  I am planning on painting it this winter.

  I was worried all the way home that it would be too cold for the pig in the box.  The temps were down around 27 degrees and we were on the highway so I was sure it would be cold in their.  I was very pleasantly surprised when I opened the door and reached in to get the new pig and found it to be quite warm.  She was all snuggled up in the straw and sound asleep and very warm.

Lastly, while Steven and I were working on bagging pig feed my wife came to the barn to check out the doors and look at the baby pigs and the new girl we got. Daisy was also their and has been dieing to get to sniff and lick the little ones so she didn't miss the chance to do so!  They are only 11 days old and they are already 2-3 lbs. 

Well, I am going to head to bed, I am exhausted and tomorrow is the start of my final work week for the year.  I always take from Christmas to January 3rd off to spend with the family and get unfinished business taken care of for winter.  This year I am also taking off from snow for this time so it will actually be a vacation!!

Talk to everyone tomorrow!

Kenny