Sled riding and NEW PIGGIES!!!

Everyone had a great Christmas!  The kids got a Wii from santa.  They are having a blast.  I got a special present from my wife's parents in japan....PINK SPRINKLES!!!!   This is partially dehydrated salmon roe with seasonings.  It is awesome with buttered rice!

 A little present we had for the kids was a pool day down in West Virginia.  We took them down and stayed in a hotel overnight with a pool so they could play and swim.  We ate dinner at Mountaineer race track before checking in and then just spent the night relaxing.  We had a snow storm over night while we were asleep.

We got around 6" of snow.  This was the first snow fall that I have not had to plow in ten years.   It was so nice to get to experience it with the kids.  I have never been home with the kids when it is snowing. 

While I was in West Virginia Steven packed the sledding hill to pack the snow while it was in perfect packing condition.  As soon as I got home with the family he and his brothers came over to build a launch ramp at the top of the hill.   The ramp allows you to launch yourself quickly down the hill without needing pushed.  It is only about ten feet tall right now but as we get more snow over the winter we will continue to build it up to about 15-20 feet tall. 

Here is a picture looking down the hill from the top of the ramp.  It is hard to tell but the bottom is about 450-500 yards away.  There are two steep sections in the middle and top middle that speed you up as you go down the hill.   We have a pile of wood at the top of the hill for a fire.  We usually have a pretty large fire, big enough for about 15-20 people to stand around to warm up.  It is also a beacon for anyone looking for where we are at.   Also, anyone who has been following my posts for a while will also know that we use a trailer towed by the tractors for return trips up the hill.  As the night goes on and the temps drop the hill gets faster and faster till you actually go clear to the woods and curve back around to the road!  We have clocked sledding speed up to almost 40 mph before with a gps one of the kids had on their phone. 

 After we finish sledding last night at 1:30 am I headed in to check on Lady A who was getting more and more restless all day.  Shortly after walking into the barn I noticed she was in labor and was very close.  A few seconds later the first piglet was born.  So all the guests that were left from sledding piled into the barn to watch one be born. 

Tamworth x Berkshire piglets.

Steven's cousin video taped the birth.  I am posting because I think it is good to see natural birth whenever possible.  If you do not want to see just pass it up.  The one they saw, as well as many of it's litter mates, came breach (butt first), which is not the best way but as long as the feet come first is not a problem.  

As you can see they are quite active upon birth and will start eating within minutes.  The action of the piglets eating releases hormones causing the mother to relax and stay laying down till the rest are born.  

One of the new babies hiding in the straw!

 After a little while I realized I was missing a key part to the birthing process....DAISY!!!  She loves to play midwife and quickly cleans up all the babies and gets them dry and active and happy.

Daisy, our piggy midwife, waiting to jump in and help out!

 Today I took the wife and kids down to see all the babies.  Momma was laying down and feeding when we got there which worked out great.

 A closer picture of everyone cuddling close to momma.

All the piglets are a red color with black spots.  Some only have one or two black spots while others have a lot.  The first piglet born is one that I call a squealer.  It constantly is squealing like it is being stepped on or laid on.  This causes the mother to frequently think one of her babies is in danger.  She will try to wiggle a little to make sure she is not on one but if the squealer squeals loud enough she will jump up to protect her babies.  Sadly, she did that this afternoon and stepped on one of the biggest and most spotted ones.  It did not make it as a 550lb momma vs. a 1.5lb baby is no contest.

Everyone else is doing good though and the squealer is doing less and less squealing now so she is calming down some.  She should do much better on her next litter.  Her first litter she had one stillborn and eight live piglets.  After the one we lost we have seven left.  They are all quite large so that makes up for the low numbers.  Hopefully she will have more next time!!!

Goodnight everyone.  Tomorrow night I will do my annual new years post....provided I am not working!  : /

Kenny

Christmas Eve on the farm

Well, it is 8:45 and the kids are already in bed trying to go to sleep in time for santa to come!!  I dearly remember those days as a child and how much fun that was.  We also had a fun and busy day getting some firewood cut for our friend Willie, Steven, Grandma and Grandpa, and us.  I finally found a good trailer for the four wheeler today and brought it home.  The kids filled it completely up while me and the boys cut wood.

Alex didn't want to pose but Lisa jumped at the chance!

This was after they had it mostly full and Alex was ready for a picture to be taken!

 Then, after a lot of hard work in the field it was time to finish Christmas cookies for them selves and Santa.  Unfortunately Alex ate most of the ones he made!

Before I came in for the night I gave all the animals a little treat...the pigs got extra feed tonight, the cows got a special bale of hay and Mario got some of the pigs feed for a special treat and some scratching!   Lady A is almost ready to pop, she will be having babies any day now!

I will write another post tomorrow after everything calms down, for now, a little couch time with the wife to watch a movie before Santa gets here and then off to bed!!!


Goodnight all and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!!!

The Merrick Family!

Some views from the hill and new Ear Tags!!

Since we are having such mild weather I decided to got for a 4-wheeler ride yesterday and took a couple pics from on top of the hill.  Everything looks so bare and open without leaves on the trees!

I do love the large oaks that are left at the top of the area that I cleared off.  It looks so much different now than when we moved in!

My last pic was looking down the hill from where we start when sled riding!  Quite a ways down there!

Lastly, my new tags for all the cattle came today!  I am so excited.  I have been able to tell them all apart till this year and now I am getting so many full black and full brown/white ones that I cannot tell them apart without seeing them with their mommas.  So we ordered custom tags for the farm.  The purple ones will be for all the Momma cows and the orange ones are for all the steers.

If you look closely we have our farm name right on the tags!!!  I can't wait to see them on the cows.  Will be so nice to have solid easily visible tags to know who I am looking at!

On another note.  It is a week before Christmas and we just had a weekend of 55 degree weather with light rains.  It is good to get caught up on our water that we didn't get over the summer.  As long as the ground isn't frozen it is soaking right in.  Furthermore, the manure that I have applied to the fields already is being taken into the soil by the rain and the grass is already greening up from it!  I am partial to a mild winter.  However, it would be nice to get a couple of big big snows that stick long enough for some awesome sledding.  We didn't get to do much at all last year so everyone is looking forward to it this year!

Also, next week is our annual herd check.  This is when we pregnancy check all the momma cows and vaccinate and De-worm everyone.  This is also when we castrate all the bulls that will be raised for meat.  This will hopefully be the last one we have to do in the old cow shed.  By this time next year I plan on having a fully functional concrete floored barn to feed in and care for the animals.  The current situation was nice when we had less than 15.   However, with almost 30 they don't all fit in the barn.  I am going to need to get some new heavy gates to add to the pen for this checkup.  Lets hope for 11 out of 11 bred!!!

Kenny

Finally got a feed bin set up for pig feed!!!

As most of you will already know we raise our pigs here on the farm as naturally as possible.  However, they still need some supplemental feed  to keep them healthy and growing during winter and during things such as the drought we had this year.  For the past year or two we have been getting a grain based supplement in bags.  However, over the course of this past summer the rodents and birds discovered this fact and have been getting into the feed.  So the decision was made that we needed a feed bin to store the feed for the pigs.

I prepped a site and formed it for concrete and a few weeks back the neighbor got concrete delivered for some areas in his barn and had enough left over to put a pad in for a feed bin.  It had a bit too much calcium in it and set up way to fast to finish nicely but it has a rustic look that kind of matches the old barn so we are just gonna run with it!  I need to make the step a little bit bigger but all in all it is almost perfect for size.

I took a week of vacation around thanksgiving to get it set up.  I traded the neighbor some of the baling work I have done for him for his old feed bin that he is was not using any longer.  I got it down and moved here and ready to repair and set up by the weekend following thanksgiving.   However, the parts needed to finish the repair did not arrive till after my vacation was over.  So I had to finish the repair and install after they arrived at the end of the week. 

We had to assemble the parts inside the bin because after they were assembled they would not fit through the hole in the bottom.  To be able to install the new bottom in the bin my wife and I had to stand it up on the pad and stand inside of the base to put it all together.  Below is a pic (albeit a bad one) of my wife  crawling down and out of the bin to allow me to get in to drill the new holes needed to complete the repair and installation.

Here is a pic of it completed and filled with feed.  I could have shortened the auger but I decided not to as it was much easier to add a drop pipe to the end of it to get the feed into a bucket.   Before the bin I had to get one ton of feed at a time.  This fed all of the feeder pigs, sows, and the boar for about three weeks.  I had to have it bagged and I would drive 35 minutes to pick it up and then hand carry into the barn and stack in the mall where the mice and rats and birds would proceed to rip open the bags and spread the feed everywhere while eating it!  Now I can get about 2.5 tons of feed at one time.  This is enough to feed all the pigs for about two months.  It is protected from rodents, dry, and delivered for me for less than what it cost to have it bagged, let alone the travel costs to pick it up!

I wired everything myself including a weatherproof switch that is wired up and mounted to the leg of the feed bin.  It is so nice to just flip a switch and fill a bucket vs. carrying bags and having to deal with all the empty bags that I am not allowed to reuse.  I am now also able to weigh all the feed out to be sure I am not over feeding or underfeeding or wasting feed!


I wanted to add a little note about bedding.  I recently baled a bunch of corn stubble for bedding the barn for me and several of the neighbors.  Even though it is a little more difficult to spread I think it works better than straw.  This is due to the bulky dry stems being able to soak up lots of moisture and they bind everything together better.  I usually put a bale into the cow shed and spread it out enough that it isn't in a huge pile and the pigs and cows do the rest of the work for me.  The cows nibble at the stubble and play in it and the pigs root all through it looking for treats.  There is a surprising amount of ear corn loss when harvesting the corn.  When we rake the corn stubble the lost ears usually get raked up with it and end up in the bales.  It gives the pigs extra motivation to spread it all out!!

Here on the farm I am trying to introduce more organic matter to the soil to make up for what has been lost over the last century of conventional farming.  The previous owner rented it out to someone who didn't care for the soil as well as he could and continually rotated back and forth from corn and beans with no cover crop in between.  The soils here were very poor when we moved in and I have spent the last seven years trying to make them better. 

Using corn stubble helps me do this!  When the stubble soaks up the moisture and bonds all the manure together it is capturing all the nutrients I need to put back on the fields.  Furthermore, the bacteria in the manure immediately start breaking down the corn stubble into nutrients that the plants in the field can draw up through their roots and grow on!  If left out on the field the corn stubble will take a year or two to break down.  When I use as bedding and spread on the field during the winter it is completely broken down in the field by spring.

Due to the extremely wet year we had last year I wasn't able to spread manure like I did the year before and I could tell a huge difference between the areas that had manure and those that didn't when harvesting this year.  As soon as I finished my final cutting this year I cleaned all the barns and also spread the pile of manure I have had composting in the pasture for two years.  I still have the manure in the pit I made during the wettest part of last winter.  I cannot get it out without the use of an excavator.  I will work on that issue the next time dad or I rents one for some project around the farm.  I am sure that it will be soon and I am anxious to get it out as there is enough manure in that pit to cover one of my smaller fields really well!


I hope everyone is ready for the holidays!  We just got a Christmas tree yesterday and my kids and wife decorated it last night.  I haven't decided if we are going to do any lights outside yet as we have not gotten any yet to do so.  We are also getting ready for the arrival of new piglets starting at the end of the month as well as our annual herd check and vaccinations!

Have a great day everyone!

Kenny