Despite the mouse, a road trip with the fat boys & one large girl

Hi All;
It has been a long lazy summer for the piggies.
They arrived in late April like normal but were not #20 weiners, they were more like #40 weiners... and growing fast.
Dumb ass me did not think ahead about this...
I called the butcher shop to set up a date...  They say well it can be mid-August or it can be late October... WTF?
The September state fairs and the 4H piggies take up everything else...  Well, this is a no-brainer right???  Late October it is!  We do not want #130 piggies!

In a normal year, my three little piggies consume apx. #2000-2500 of grain.  
This year, they started getting low in early September... oh no... I buy a piddling #200 in #50 sacks ... Big waste of money there...
This was like an appetizer for the fat kids...
I drive off to Columbia Falls (2.5 hrs) and I buy #1000 extra bulk grain!  This makes for #3200 of grain... holy pig shit batman!  (I have plenty of that product)
By the 12th of October, my #1000 is all but gone!  PUCK! I buy another #250 (in #50 sacks) OMG these kids are going on a limited-grain diet for the next 2 weeks!  
They still got grain, but only #30 a day plus all the grasses, compost, and garden waste!
Let me tell you there was much complaining, pushing, shoving, and biting going on!
Despite their complaints, they got lots of nap time, plenty of green grass, fresh cold water, and the compost bucket each day.
On Tuesday evening they were bribed into peacefully loading themselves into the back of the pickup.
Wednesday morning before daylight we were off on our Fun piggy road trip!  I suspect it is more fun for me than the piggies...
Raining with snowflakes but no slick roads, with no serious truck troubles (it is a 1973).
The truck did have a new miss under load and with #1800 of piggy in the back, there was plenty of load!
The trip to Sandpoint went just fine, we returned to my brother's house and decided to look at the motor...
What do we see? Serious sparks arcing all around two of the sparkplug wires!  Almost burnt in half!
Well gosh, do you suppose that could be the new miss under load???
Guess we should have looked under the hood before heading into town...
Driving the rest of the way home the truck purred all the way...
Oh Well, the piggies made it in to see the butcher despite that dang mouse!

Today I got the hanging weights on them!
The large girl was #265!
The fat boy was #291!
And the Fatter boy was #295!!!
OMG a normal good hanging weight is #180!
The butcher shop chastised me saying they were too large to make hams from!
Luckily for me, we get cutlets in place of hams.  Unluckily for the two other pig buyers as they wanted hams...

I was told by the butcher that if this happens again to call them in late August or early September and say HEY I GOT FAT PIGGIES!
They assured me they will find a spot for them early...

Wow!! That's alotsafeed!!! And biggie-piggies!! Congratulations!

At least you're working on "months" - just try growing those horrible industrial chickens that Hubby does twice a year so we feed the community and get "farm taxes". We do them for 8 weeks, but if the weather is too hot they can start having heart attacks, if the weather's too cold they don't grow and our local processor makes more money on them than we do! Thanks to bird flu, we couldn't get chicks for our fall crop and I sighed with relief. We've got enough egg sales to meet the tax minimum earnings. If I had better fencing, pigs would be less stressful! However, we'd probably do better with them over the winter rainy season when the grass grows than during our summer drought! Better yet would be if the neighbors hadn't freaked when I invited a *really* good bow hunter to give us a share of venison!!!

Hmmm... will pigs eat English Ivy?

Jay, can I ask, are you given payments by the Government to grow out chickens?

John C Daley wrote:Jay, can I ask, are you given payments by the Government to grow out chickens?

No. Land is very expensive around here, and we have to pay property taxes on the "value of our property" to our Municipal government. If we produce and sell more than a specified dollar value of product off a large enough percentage of our land, and can prove that with spread-sheets or receipts (very few farm-gate operations hand out receipts, so they had to give small farmers other options), we get a reduction on those taxes.

Considering what land prices have done in this area in the last 20 years, it would be over a thousand Canadian dollars, which in effect "subsidizes" the cost of raising those chickens - we pasture them in a portable system, so each batch covers over an acre as well as occupying a brooder and run area at the beginning.

Our egg business covers enough of the "field area" that we were approved. People who just have a "coop and run" that covers 1/8th of their property, can no longer get rebates on their whole property, but just the 1/8th as people were abusing the system. I explained to the fellow that came to inspect that the "forest" area we pass through to get to the field was critical to help maintain our well, and he accepted that rational as well, possible partly because we weren't skating at the bare minimum of the income target.

So we can get "farm taxes" on just about any product we sell to customers. However the paperwork can be a bit onerous, so having only 1-2 products to report on makes thing simple because once you're over the threshold, more doesn't change your rebate.

I suppose home processing is not an option for either of you? Around here it is basically the only option... Which I am grateful for.

I definitely know a 300 pound hanging weight pig would be a huge effort.

jordan barton wrote:I suppose home processing is not an option for either of you? Around here it is basically the only option... Which I am grateful for.

I definitely know a 300 pound hanging weight pig would be a huge effort.

It's illegal to even give away a chicken that wasn't processed in a gov't registered abattoir if there's one within reasonable transportation distance (we're less that 5 km from one). They have relaxed the rules a little from when they changed them about 10 years ago because so many small producers simply stopped producing. If we want farm taxes out of them, we have to be prepared to show them a receipt from a registered abattoir.

However, that's just for sales. In fact I just spent a couple of hours processing one of our geese. I've got to get a pot large enough to scald a goose, as my hands just aren't up to that much plucking! The wings are the big problem and I cut off the tips on both sides and left the edge feathers on one of them. Normally I dry pluck all the easy stuff so I can keep the feathers for whatever project I decide (feather bed topper if I can get enough???), then I scald to make it easier to get out the harder feathers.  

Yes, 300 pound hanging weight would be an issue. I'm not sure our tractor could manage it! We've used our tractor for doing a deer and it worked not too badly. There is proper equipment I'd want to buy or borrow if I had to do that size of animal. A friend was telling me he once did a moose - not for the faint of heart!

Thomas, how much coin do you think you spent on their feed?

Way more than I have ever spent before!
Bulk grain is $185 a thousand#  So $555
Nine #50 sacks at $20 apx are $180   So  $735 plus one new bulk bag at $25.
That's $760 not counting fuel to go get it!  

On the plus side, these are organic, all-natural,pesticide-free and the best-tasting pork money can buy!
This year the cost is probably $300 more than any other year.

thomas rubino wrote:On the plus side, these are organic, all-natural, pesticide-free and the best-tasting pork money can buy!
This year the cost is probably $300 more than any other year.

So what was the cost per pound? And how does that compare to organic pork in your region?
Did you charge your buyers enough to cover those increased costs?

They were pastured, so that also means their fat will have natural Vit D, which commercial pork lacks if they spend their entire life in a barn! For those of us living in the north, Vit D is super important in the winter for all sorts of reasons!

You Know Jay, I have never figured out the exact costs of this, well, because it just did not matter.
I started raising weiners years ago after discovering those beautiful pork chops from Costco that we loved so much... we're making Liz sick.
Too many things were being done to those poor piggies prior to processing.

One day at the natural food store I spotted organic pork chops for the outrageous price of over $8 a pound (remember this was back many years)
These chops were from a farm in Bonners Ferry, ID just north of us.
They were mouthwatering good and best of all Liz could eat them!
After traveling up to meet the people, I went back that spring and purchased #2500 of organic feed.
Three little weiners were purchased locally and from that moment on I became a happy pig farmer!

This year I lost money due to other circumstances .
Most years my pig & feed are free, my fuel is paid for and all I pay out of pocket is butcher costs.
Some years even better,
This year I just grin and bare it.
If Liz is happy...  well you know the rest!

thomas rubino wrote:You Know Jay, I have never figured out the exact costs of this, well, because it just did not matter.
If Liz is happy...  well you know the rest!

You're feeding Liz and you, and feeding the two buyers, whom I'll assume are fairly local, and that's really all that matters! Local, humanely raised food is where I'm at!

I mostly asked because even though it cost a lot this year, you learned a valuable lesson or three, and on a per pound basis, it may still have been worth it compared to not having safe food to eat.