Jumping into raising pigs. Not how I planned it!

Pigs. Hmm. Where do I start? How about, I had an idea that we should raise a couple of hogs for the freezer. How hard could it be, right? I found a seller of cute little baby pigs.

My BFF and I drove an hour away, with two dog crates in the back of my minivan, and cash in hand, to buy two female piglets. I had an old chicken coop that we weren't using any longer, and planned to put a fence around that spot for the the pigs to grow nice and big. We made it there and back with two little piglets squealing the entire way. Once home, the kids were amazed, but I reminded them (and still do) that these are for food, not pets. We named them Sausage and Bacon for just that purpose.

Two days later, Sausage and Bacon 1.0 escaped and were never seen from again. *Sigh*

Two days after that, my husband and I went back to the same sellers and bought two more female piglets. This was quite reminiscent of my first batch of chicks (the ones a cat ate two hours after I bought them). We did things a bit differently with Sausage and Bacon 2.0. They managed to hang around.

These two have grown and grown over the last few months. I fantasize about my deep freezer being full of delicious, fresh pork. And then it happened...  My husband looked at the pigs, and then at me, and said, "I think that one's a boy."  Damn it!

I wasn't planning to be a breeder, just an eater. Geez! From my research though, it looks like Boy Pig may be infertile.

Oh, and in case you don't know, pigs really, really LOVE escaping their pens. These two have slipped out no less than 4 times in the last few months. Once the neighbor behind us found them and trapped them in his barn before coming to see if they were ours. Thank goodness he did or they wouldn't been gone like the other two. Now that they're bigger, they're easier to wrangle and are happy to come to us when we have food. Not so happy when we try to put them back in the pen though. You'll notice all the concrete blocks around the bottom of the fencing below. They root, root, root until there's a big enough gap to push the blocks aside and out they go.

Boy Pig is friendly & always up for some
petting.

Much bigger now

Girl Pig is the troublemaker. She's the one I've caught rooting out the most. Boy Pig prefers to stay put, but will follow girl pig anywhere.

Sooooooo, at this point, I'm more than ready to take Girl Pig to the slaughter house, but she needs to get a bit bigger first. Boy Pig is a good size, but he's super friendly and easier to handle. And I won't even get into all the information I've read about meat taint in males. UGH!  I just wanted two girl pigs to put in the freezer.  *Sigh*

Stay tuned for more piggy updates to see if they make it to slaughter this summer.


UPDATE: Sooo, Girl Pig escaped yet again. UGH! Ticked me off enough that I finally called the slaughterhouse, but they're so busy (he said he does 200-300 heads a week!) I had to book a day. They now have a going away date of April 22nd. This meat better be the best meat in the world for all the trouble these two have been.