There’s currently a preponderance of smaller pigs: besides one boar and two sows, there are 6 teenagers and 11 piglets. They are heritage breeds, so all of them are pretty small as pigs go. Yesterday there was a rather large group of people here for a gathering, and there’s a natural inclination to go where…

Princess farrowed 11 piglets on June 24, and it was unsurprising that two were already dead when I found her nest shortly after giving birth. I don’t think she has that many teats, and even 9 is a huge number for a small heritage breed. Normally I’d have closed the connecting gate into that pasture…

It’s been a while since my last post. Winter ended with a bang here: over a foot of snow for over a week in February and March, then suddenly some sunny warm weather, then a few days of torrential rains and bad flooding of large rivers like the Willamette, then very warm sunny weather for…

Log since piglets were born on December 23: December 24. All eight piglets accounted for in the morning, but by evening I counted only 7. The corpse showed up in the shelter a few days later. December 27. The vet came out to castrate whichever piglets were unfortunate enough to be born male. Most people…

It’s been a very windy and wet day, and I went out to feed this afternoon. In the rainy weather I feed the pigs inside their roomy dry shelter, and the ritual is that the group stays outside the shelter gate while I dump their food inside, then I wait until they get a little…

Pasture pigs are so easy. Moms do all the farrowing work themselves, making their own nest away from the others. When Momma disappeared for a day last July, I spent a day looking for her. I finally found her and three new piglets under a blackberry thicket. I know that Princess should be farrowing right…