Our beloved Boar "Redballs" has passed.

Well, it has been another very busy and unfortunately difficult week/weekend here on the farm.  I have a friends sow here to breed to our boar and she was not in the mood yet and he was.  During their first encounter he cut her a couple of times with his overly large tusks.

Tamworth boars 4" tusks

 So, instead of keeping him separated I spoke with the vet and was told that with a simple procedure we could trim them back and he would be fine again.  He has never been aggressive or mean.  It is just that his teeth were so sharp that by simply rubbing them against another pig, cow, or even one of us he would slice skin like a razor blade.  So I gave him a good scratching and he laid down and took a nap and after some medicine to keep him sleeping for a little while we trimmed his teeth.  He woke up later and other than an upset stomach, he seemed to be fine.

My last picture of our Tamworth boar

 We all headed out to do our respective tasks and a few hours later my buddy Steven stopped to check on him and he had passed away.  No signs of struggle or stress.  He apparently just laid down and went to sleep.  No one will ever know what happened for sure but I know he knows we cared because he had the best back scratching he ever had just before he passed!  I will be sure that any future boars we have here on the farm have their Tusks removed or dealt with while they are babies so we never have to do this again.   Our hardest struggle is yet to come with the fact that it takes a year to raise a breeding age boar and we will need to breed sows in about 3 months.  This will not be easy to fix.


In the mean time, while I was super busy mowing and baling hay we had a couple more additions to the cattle herd.   One of our two Maine Anjou's, "Anjou", had a beautiful baby girl. Anjou lost her little boy last summer to a very fast acting meningitis.  She adopted one of the previous years steers for the rest of the summer till he left over winter.  She has been lonely ever since and helping with the other calves till this little girl was born.  She is a great looking calf and our first cross of the Maine Anjou breed with our charolais x angus bull.

Dam: Main Anjou  Sire: Charolais x Angus

 Our other new calf is a tiny little thing.  She is a heifer and was born about a month early.  Normally when they are born this early they do not survive.  However, she is very lucky to have a terrific mother and she is a strong little calf!  She is also definitely Legacy's girl.

Dam: Black Hereford  Sire: Charolais x Angus

 To give you an idea of just how small she I took a picture of my wife petting her when we saw her the first time.  Daisy was actually bigger than her when we first saw her.  However, she is growing so fast that she has gone from an estimated 35# at birth to around 50# already, and it has only been about 6 days!  If she is anything like her momma she is gonna be a great momma herself some day!

Here is a picture of Anjou's calf the Saturday morning when I tagged them both.

In some other notes.  I picked up some more custom work for hay as well as a little more hay ground for myself.  I am getting closer to my goals every day with where we want to go with the farm.  The herd is starting to grow very quickly as is my hay business.  As I have said many times this year I am very excited to see where we finish the year and where this journey is leading us.  

We are greatly looking forward to the customer party on July 5th.  It is gonna be a great time!  Hopefully we have plenty of baby piglets for everyone to see that day!  Second cutting is coming on quickly and we are hoping to finish the cow shed project at the end of this month and possibly start another that I hope to have mostly completed before the party.   More to come on both of these soon!

Kenny