Six of our Berkshire weaners have now left for pastures new, three boars going to Dingwall and three gilts to Dunecht.
The buyers seem happy with their pigs, each getting two large weaners and one small one.
Another gilt will be collected tomorrow, while the remaining two boars will be collected in a month or so.
It will be a major relief to have them all gone as the delays caused by foot-and-mouth restrictions meant we were both short of cash and feeding the weaners longer than we’d like.
In fact, the first group of three had barely departed this morning before the Other Half was off to the feed merchant to spend £100 on sow rolls and barley as we were down to three day’s supply.
We’ll be back again tomorrow or Tuesday with the cash from the next weaner plus the change from todays to stock up on more feed and a large bottle of agricultural disinfectant.
The money from the second batch to leave today is a repayment to us, as the pigs currently owe us almost £1,600, while the money for the two being collected in a month has already been split 50:50 between feed and repaying us.
The two gilts we’re keeping will be slaughtered for pork in about four months, and will go some way to repaying the pig debt as well.
Of course, we have the most recent litter to feed as well but hopefully we’ll be able to shift all of them in nine weeks and buy in the winter feed.
Keeping livestock is precarious at the best of times, and requires constant juggling of priorities just to get by.
It is fun, though. (Most of the time…)
Would not like to think what the cost would be if you were talking sheep! Last week 1500 lambs failed to sell at auction in Dumfries and were taken to slaughter and then incinerated. Precarious indeed.
Wee Blackface lambs locally are lucky to achieve £15 at the moment.
Hi there,
Glad to read that this lot are going in a more orderly fashion than some of your previous weaners - no time-wasters this time I hope.
Regards
FelixC
This is a litter that has been bedevilled by timewasters, but we got there in the end.
Thurston, I think it’s an appalling waste that 1,500 lambs have been slaughtered and incinerated. At the very least, it could have be slaughted and frozen, then sent overseas for famine or flood relief.
It’s been a very, very busy day, I’m cream crackered and if you’re looking for something new to read, may I suggest:
http://www.ambucabs.blog.co.uk/
Down in one of my old stomping grounds
http://bloodystudents.blogspot.com/
Yes, there are some good people out there and when Merys needed them, they were there
And I’m off to bed.
Hello again
Hope you are feeling better today & the gilt left as planned.
Best of luck with finding good buyers for your next litter.
We only have 5 Saddleback weaners, growing onto slaughter, none of this complicated ’selling offspring to the public’ stuff - sounds like far too much agro for me.
By the way, having read some more of your info, I saw some Tamworth weaners at the last Rare Breeds Sale -they didn’t sell, only getting a bid of about £10. Perhaps they were then offered in the local papers & seduced your potential buyers.
Not sure I’d have the patience to deal with people who can’t make their minds up - isn’t there anyway you can charge a non-refundable deposit on your beasts? Though I guess you’ve thought through all the possibilities…
Regards
FelixC
Another gilt left today, so we’re down to two gilts for us and two boars that will be lodging with us for a few weeks.
Now we just have to start looking for buyers to take the next group of weaners in eight to 10 weeks time. There will be 10 available, so the whole round of negotiations, renegotiations and re-renegotiations will be begin all over again. And I never wanted a sales job…
Thank you for the afore mentioned quality weaner Stonehead. Potential buyers should be aware of the good line of Berkshires Stonehead has, our last one weighed 72.2 kg (kill out/meat weight) with 20mm back fat.
I went to check on how the new weaner was settling in this morning. Our pedigree ‘Pepper’ appears to be mothering the weaner, allowing it to follow around, keep close and feed from the same trough. Maybe this demonstrates good temprement and that Pepper will be a good mother herself, in time. Excellent. I also mixed in a little warm porridge with their feed this morning, as it was such a cold night and I am a bit of a soft touch.
Nothing wrong with a bit of warm porridge in the morning. The pigs enjoy it and it helps keep their deep body temperature at 38C on a bitterly cold day like today.
If you serve the food (and water) cold, they have to eat more to keep their temperature up.
Even if not making full-on pig porridge, on cold days I like to tip a kettle of boiling water over the feed and let it soak in while I do the other chores. I then mix the feed with my bare hand - if it’s too hot for my hand, it’s too hot for the pigs and I add a little cold water until the temperature is just right.
If you really want to spoil them, boil up a a few potatoes until they start falling apart and tip them, plus the boiling water, over the feed. Not too many or you’ll have to adjust their ration, but three or four on a cold morning is much appreciated by the pigs. (Neeps, carrots, turnips or mangels can be used in the same way.)
Hi
Agree with the cooked tatties bit - our pigs are loose on this year’s veg garden and are helpfully snouting up all the missed tatties.
However, they don’t seem to like raw ones- they just get left on the surface soil.
If they are cooked up a bit, & poured into the trough, the tatties disappear - almost as quickly as squishy tomatoes from the polytunnel. One of our gilts loves her toms so much, she runs off with them to eat ‘in bed’. The others seem to suck the toms to death - loud slurping noises and boundless enthusiasm for the soft fruit.
The pigs seem to know when I go into the polytunnel - which is next to their pen - that they are going to get something tasty. They gather by the fence waiting for their treats, funny things pigs…
FelixC
Be careful not to feed large quantities of raw potatoes to pigs. They can’t diest large quantities of potato starch and it causes stomach upsets. Cooking changes the starch into more digestible forms.