RAISING OUR GLORIOUS PIGS

NEW PASTURE FOR WINTER

As we are still finding our feet and way on the farm with our live stock, we are kinda making it up as we go, we do have a plan, quite a few, in fact hundreds of ideas, but our land, animals and the weather are teaching us what we can do and what won't work, fabulous learning curves that are helping us work out how to set up the paddocks for long term rotations.  I believe you don't honestly make mistakes you just learn how not to do something, if however you have learn't how not to do something and then repeat that lesson technically unless you have a good reason for making that choice then it could be a mistake !!!

Earning a pigs trust is a big thing, rush them, or try to control them and they will never forget, so moving the ladies from their run of six months across the top field to their new pasture was going to be a great lesson, there was the two naughty adventuros teenager pigs that had escaped through the electric fencing a few weeks ago, and as expected they just saw the movement as excitable freedom, then there was Pinky our mature Gloucestershire Old Spot pig who looks after all the weaners and runts, she refused to move !!!  If Pinky will not move so will not the three new large black weaners who rely on Pinky for mummy support!  So learning from our ladies, we decided to wait until the next morning when they would all be excited about their breakfast, this should/would entice Pinky and the weaners... 

And success thank goodness for breakfast and hungry pigs, Pinky was a hint dubious but following our calling and her own personal feed trough she was easy to walk to the new paddock, scary for me, as technical in my mind there is a LOOSE PIG being followed by THREE LOOSE WEANERS!!!  I love the adrenilaine of being such a rookie!  In time I know our pigs will teach me not us as my husband is so relaxed, that they can be loose and won't actually want to run away and leave !!!

Fabulous new rootle pasture with some woodland and lots and lots of great new fresh grassy space to investigate and keep these lovely pigs entertained, happy pigs equals happy farming! 

Really pleased to see our girls in their new grassy paddock, won't last that long, but what they are after is all the fabulous hidden roots under the ground.

Our rare Large Black Weaners