The Boys

This is a terrible photo, but this is another piece of evidence that the boys do sleep in their house...

It's hard to tell, but all four of the boys are in here sleeping. Oliver, Bill, Ted and Zeke. As much as I wanted to stand in the door way and take a decent photo I opted to just take this photo through the window. I know if I stand at the door one of them would become aware and then wake up. That would ruin the photo!

Each of the boys have a fun personality as well as annoying. The annoying one is that they are all looking for food, except when they are sleeping. Even then they are probably dreaming about eating.

Oliver is our big boy, born September 29, 2021. He has always been very sweet and really liked the belly rubs as a piglet. 

Oliver at 4 months old

Oliver was the runty boy of Ethel's first/last litter. She wasn't supposed to be a momma, she was intended for and ended up in the freezer. 

Oliver will be 15 months later this month. He's a hefty boy now. Runty might equal becoming large. He's approximately 135 pounds now. We'll keep growing him out until May.

Then there's Big Momma's boys, Bill & Ted. They are the two that were left from Fiona's litter in March this year. We decided that once we sold their sister to a couple in Idaho, we would just keep them for meat. 

These two...Bill (on the left) is the sweetest of the two. Ted is friendly, but he is more standoff-ish. Bill likes to come up and get a good belly rub and looks fairly happy with their current situation. At 9 months old, they do alright. They hold their own during feeding time - they have to contend with Oliver.

Then there's our little buddy...Zeke.

All full of apples!

So, Zeke is from our accidental sow, Skinny Momma. She was slated to be slaughtered along with the other five girls that were processed on September 16. We decided to hang on to her a little longer since she was extremely small, compared to the other five. We kept Zeke for a couple of reasons. First, he's super cute! When he was little he would let us pick him up and hold him and give him ALL the love! We ended up selling his four sisters on the same day. As such, his momma decided that he was old enough to eat on his own and pretty much cut him off. At three months, I suppose he would have been fine, but I felt bad for him. So for a few more weeks I decided that he could have "private dining" and get extra feed throughout the day. That lasted for three weeks or so. Let's just say he is/was the most spoiled of ALL of the piglets we have raised here. Even now, as the littlest boar he still gets chased away from the food. He gets plenty, I think, but I feel bad for him. He sometimes will stand off to the side, his back to the other three and with his head down. Such a sad sight!

We are planning to graduate him in early 2024. The other three are on Morgan Kemper's schedule for May 2023 as well as skinny momma. I have a feeling that skinny momma will remain skinny, so she might just be turned into ground pork. Oliver will graduate to our freezer while Bill and Ted will go to a friend's freezer and a neighbor across the street from us. 

It's hard to go back to commercially grown pork after having homegrown goodness. However, these pigs take so long to grow to a good size, we have only gone to about 14-15 months with them. Oliver will be the oldest hog going to slaughter at 18 months old. We'll see how much bigger he get in the next 5 months. I did recently buy a pork shoulder roast and some trimmings to grind for breakfast sausage. I would rather season my own sausage rather than buy the seasoned stuff a the store. 

Looking forward to filling the freezer with more pork!