Thursday, April 5, 2018

Homesteading Update: Baby Pigs, Barn Clean Up, & More!


            Hey folks! I am super behind on this, but thought I would share a farm update in photos nonetheless!

             As per usual, we have had some crazy weather here in Indiana already this year. As you can see in the photo above, daffodils have already been popping up like crazy! They're always a nice reminder that the end of winter is near and spring is right around the corner!

             We had our first litter of baby piggies almost 2 weeks before I had my own baby piggy! Ha ha While exciting, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little pissed at the time that even our hog had babies before I did. Lol
             As I was walking back to feed Mr.Bruce and Gabby in the evening on President's Day, I noticed that she was nowhere to be found, which was odd. She didn't come out of the old pig house until I was dumping the food out. It was strange for her to be in there during the day, so I had a feeling something was up. I checked her rear end out and sure enough, there was some blood. Being 38 weeks and super pregnant at the time, I waddled as fast as I could back to the house to let John know. We went back out and sure enough, there were baby piggies in the old house!
             Gabby had 5 piglets altogether. Unfortunately, one was stillborn. Over night, the others wandered off and we thought maybe one of the adults ate them at first. We eventually found 3 of them over the course of the day, but one of those didn't make it overnight either. :( So, we ended up with 2, a boy and a girl, and they are doing well now! As a matter of fact, the boy is getting super pudgy! Needless to say, we also learned some lessons for next time!

             John also got around to making a new lawn mower cart before our littlest farmer arrived. Our old one held up surprisingly long considered it was almost entirely made out of scrap parts and as much as we used it! This new one is wider and is insanely heavy. It's going to take some getting used to!

             Although I'm more concerned about building chicken tractors and hatching more chicks at the moment * ahem *, John and his parents have been working on expanding the pig area yet again. Which I knew was going to happen eventually, but I guess I just hadn't planned on it being a project we were going to work on this soon. Anyways...

             We are conveniently expanding it all the way down to this old hog shed. So, we obviously needed to get it cleaned up and fixed up first. The before picture is from when we bought the place. It was clearly in rough shape, but they tell me it wasn't nearly as bad as it looked as far as fixing it up. Whoever lived here before was super lazy and nasty, in my opinion, and left piles of trash EVERYWHERE scattered about the woods. Old tvs, Christmas decorations, batteries, mail boxes, tires...You name it. Not surprisingly, this hog shed was no exception. They've been clearing it out a little at a time. They are actually out there right now working on moving stuff as I write this! (Before you go thinking I'm lazy, I just had a baby 2 weeks ago and most of that stuff is super heavy. :P )

             I'm starting to think we are cursed as far as keeping rabbits goes. Our newest girl bunny that we've had for a month or two died the other day. :( She is the third female bunny we've had! Not exactly sure what happened to her as she hadn't been acting sick or anything leading up to it. :/

             That's it for today! Hopefully next time I will be writing about our chick hatching endeavors and homemade incubator!

http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/clever-chicks-blog-hop-237/
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1 comment:

  1. I love the idea of homesteading, or 'crofting' as it's known here in Scotland (well, crofting is somewhere between a homestead and a small farm I guess!). ANyway, sorry to hear about the loss of your piglets and rabbit, but glad to see two of them survived. They are very cute! #FabFridayPost

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