New arrivals

[Stonehead]

While we're still looking for a mature boar, we have managed to source four very nice saddleback weaners. Two boars, two gilts, all 15 weeks old and just moved in today.

They're all due for the freezer or for sale as butchered half pigs, but we're already facing the temptation of keeping at least one of the gilts to breed from!

No pics yet as the camera batteries are drained again, but it's nice to have a few more animals again. They'll stay inside for about two weeks as a quarantine measure and give me time to get another pen erected, plus we can collect their manure for the compost heap.

After that, they'll be outside until they go for slaughter - the boars first in six to eight weeks and the gilts about six weeks after that.

We also have six Scots Grey eggs due to hatch over the next two or three days - two from our stock and four from an English line. This is always nerve-racking as Scots Greys are so rare and in-bred that we're usually lucky to get a 20% live hatch rate.

In other events, the Silver Sussex are just about to come out from under the heat lamp - freeing up the broody cage for any Scots Greys, the 10-week-old Scots Greys are about to join the others in the main run (they spend a couple of days in a run within the main run so they all get to know each other), and Orville is about to get his chance in with the girls.

Orville is one of our Scots Grey roosters and has been confined to bachelor quarters. He gets to come out when I'm around and tends to follow me around, as he's so used to being handled.

Anyway, must dash as the lunch is ready.

Stonehead

PS Do any of the Scottish mob keep Hebridean sheep? We're thinking of getting up to eight purebred ewes with lambs at foot, but never get a reply from the Hebridean Sheep Society so any advice, pointers, sources of livestock would be appreciated.

[shiney]

Good luck with the piggies. Does it cost a lot of money to have them slaughtered? I just wondered.

Where do you get a boar from? (I am thinking like a wildy sort of boar) I am not thinking of getting one!

[Stonehead]

Good luck with the piggies. Does it cost a lot of money to have them slaughtered? I just wondered.

Where do you get a boar from? (I am thinking like a wildy sort of boar) I am not thinking of getting one!

It costs just under £80 to get three pigs slaughtered, then another £60 to have them butchered. Then, if you buy pigs in as weaners, you're looking at £35-40 per pig; then there's the cost of feed, the vet, transport, fencing, housing etc. Not a cheap business, especially if you're organic and non-intensive as we are.

We could butcher them ourselves, but three pigs at a time means a lot of time. However, we do cure our own bacon and make our own sausages.

Lambs cost just over £20 for two to be slaughtered, while the butcher is paid in homebrew. Four bottles of stout per lamb!

Not a wild boar but a boar as in male pig. You can get cross-bred, non-pedigree or commercial breed boars fairly easily - the pigs that arrived today included two boars for example.

However, our breeding gilts are pedigree Berkshires (a rare breed) and we'd prefer to get a pedigree Berkshire boar to put in with them. Outdoor reared pedigree Berkshires, whether sold for breeding or for meat, command a good premium over conventional, intensively reared porkers (and for good reason).

However, with our trailer having died we may have to get a boar of another breed in so we can get the gilts in pig as soon as possible. Gilts (female pigs that haven't had a litter) that are not bred between 10 months and 14-15 months rapidly become infertile. If we get a cross-breed litter off the gilts, that would generate some cash while we wait for another pedigree boar to come our way.

Anyway, must go as some Freecyclers have come to collect the egg incubator we're lending them (their chickens were wiped out by a fox, which left a clutch of fertile eggs unhatched).

[Stonehead]

The four saddlebacks in their new quarters...



The boars are the pink pig to the left and the black one to the right, the gilts are the properly marked ones in the middle.

Four butchered half pigs are already promised to people, which means both the boars (who are going to be killed first) are already taken in full and that's great news for us.

And here's Orville the Scots Grey cockerel...



Stonehead

[shiney]

Ahhh snoozin' pigs. What a life eh?

Great pictures, thanks for the information too!

[Shirley]

LOVE the pics... love the pigs!!

[ina]

Yes - the pigs look perfectly content, don't they!

Nice cockerel, too.

[Stonehead]

They're the most laid back pigs we've had. I'm just back in from the feeding, watering and mucking out run, and the saddlebacks watched with interest as I poured their feed into their feeder. Then, they closed their eyes and went back to sleep!

The Berkshires on the other hand (and the Gloucesters when we had them) mob me, demanding their food "now, now, now".

Stonehead