Baby piglets, buttermilk, and lots of rain!

The oats came out in head almost two weeks ago.  So, I saw a one day break in the rain and decided to mow and bale them for silage.  Within minutes of being done mowing it started raining, and it rained for two days.  I finally got a break on the third day and barely got them done before it rained again.  

About three months ago I started feeding buttermilk to the pigs and the cows.  It is a natural leftover from butter making locally and makes a healthy supplement for the animals to eat instead of grains.  The cows like to have some just like the pigs and the extra vitamins and amino acids and such that are in the milk help them digest the hay they are eating much better.  The same is true for the pigs.  I am only feeding enough grain to the pigs to make sure their minerals are balanced and they are growing quicker now than they were before.  The first sample of pig meat from a buttermilk fed pig was at our customer party.  The results were great.  The meat was tender, juicy, and had great flavor.  

Now, as a result of having storage for buttermilk I have to rinse out the totes and tanks and such before I get a fresh batch.  I have heard of people doing land applications of extra milk and wash water from milking parlors but I wanted to see the results myself.  Right after I planted the oats I had some leftover milk that I needed to empty out to get a fresh load.  I went up on the hill in the field and ran it out up there to see what it would do.  I had my son in the picture for a frame of reference.  The entire field had two coating of cow manure on it prior to planting.   The area that didn't have buttermilk was barely to his waste, The strip where I dumped the wash water and  buttermilk was up to his shoulders and was 4 times thicker.  

I also tried some applications in a hay field to see the results there as well.  I will try to post pictures before we cut the hay.  I can already tell from looking across the road to the hillside exactly where I spread the milk.  It is much greener and growing twice as fast as the hay around it.  I do notice that for about a week after you apply it the hay just kinda sits and doesn't do much.  But after a rain and some sun it takes off and really grows after that.  

Monday morning when I left for work I checked the pigs and cows and still no babies.  20 minutes later, the neighbor checked the barn and the first two piglets were already born!  My wife stayed home to deliver pigs and it ended up taking most of the day.  This was Baconator, we got her when we got Doublestuffed last summer after Redballs died. She is a pure blooded berkshire pig and was actually bred for showing. She had 11 total, 2 were still born. 

 By Thursday morning we were down to only four left.  Two got laid on the second night cause it got cold and the got under momma and she rolled over on top of them.  The other three was from something else.  We are not totally certain what it was but the vet believes it was a bacterial virus brought on by the super wet weather we have been having the last three weeks.  At first we thought it was just a birth defect, however, when one of the pigs from the litters born in May got the same thing we realized something else was wrong.  

The good news is that the remaining four are very healthy and Momma is coming to milk better now so they are starting to grow quickly.  The two in the picture below both are still with us.  My wife pointed out that they look almost like twins!  I am also happy that she is finally starting to act like a mother and is being much more careful around the babies now than she was right after they were born.  Hopefully her next litter will be 12 or more and they will all make it!

We only have one more litter we are waiting on right now.  Berky does look like she is bred but is still not ready to birth yet.  I am hoping she holds off for a few more weeks.  It is kinda nice having some separation in the litters.  Also, with the buttermilk I want to have the litters spread out so we can ship at different times instead of having everyone ready at once.

Well, I hope the constant rain comes to a close soon and we get some sunshine to make everything grow.  We need rain, just not every day!  It makes it hard to get anything done!

Have a great day everyone,

Kenny

We were featured in an article for The Farm and Dairy!!!!!

I received a call from a large newspaper for the farming communities here in Ohio a few weeks back asking about the EPRI nutrient conservation program we participated in last year.  The name of the publication is Farm and Dairy and I grew up reading it from time to time as a child.  I was told that they were doing a story on the EPRI project and they wanted to know some more about what I did and what I thought about the program.  

You can read a shortened version of the article on their website at this link Conservation Projects Farm and Dairy.

The article in the actual publication is much larger.  They also used one of the pics off of my blog for the story!  I never dreamed as a kid that I would be part of something that would make the papers.  This is an exciting opportunity to show that good can come from properly implementing programs that link small farms in the rural community to larger corporations and industries.  It allows everyone involved to benefit while helping the environment at the same time. I really hope this program grows and becomes available to more people.  Every day the population of the world grows while the land we have to produce food to feed the growing population is shrinking.  By working together we can produce more food with a smaller footprint without harming the environment.

Please read the article and learn more about it.  It helped us out a lot and has the potential to help more people if the program can be implemented on a larger scale. 

Have a great day everyone!