We brought Major (the BIG boar pig) back over for another try with Hammy. But it just wasn't working. He is so big that she cannot support his weight when he mounts her. So, we started looking for other options.
A new friend in Alfalfa offered to sell us her young Hampshire boar. We took a look at him and he is just about the same size as Hammy. He has sired at least one litter of 15 beautiful piglets, so we know he works. This gal picked him up out of a bad situation where he was being fed only bread and citrus. He looks very nice now.
J and I looked at the cost of keeping a boar and feeding the grain that we have been would make it impossible to make any money with a boar on site. But I started researching pasture-raised pork and found that there were several farms out there raising their pigs very successfully on pasture with a dairy supplement. Hmmmm....we have pasture and dairy. More research proved that a full grown (500+ pound) pig eats about 4 pounds of hay a day and 1 pound of dairy. We have that. Lilo gives us a quart a day (2 pounds). So rather than paying about $3.00 a day for grain-fed pork, we figured out that we can do hay and dairy for less than $1.00 a day. Much more manageable!
So, we had our friend bring the boar out to our house. We did some fancy maneuvering and got Major loaded up and this new guy out. But Hammy kept pushing him around...I think she was trying to protect her home. He got fed up with her and pushed her away with his head. Unfortunately, we didn't notice that he has some serious (not trimmed) tusks. She walked away from him with about a 5 inch long laceration on her side. It didn't seem to bleed much and she didn't seem to notice it, but we sure did. We moved her quickly in with the goats and flushed the cut with betadine.
Next, Hammy and the boar started sniffing snouts through the fence. We turned on the hot wire, cause we didn't want this guy testing the fence too much. Well, he put his snout through the fence and must have bit it because the next thing I heard was the most horrendous screaming coming from his pen. I looked over and he had both tusks hooked on the field fence and he was pulling back with all his might.
I yelled for J as I ran around the the fence. I tried to lift the fence off of his tusks, but they hook back and he was stuck. Adding insult to injury, he was grounding the fence to the hot wire, thus shocking both of us in the process. J came running, unplugged the fence and handed me the fence pliers. I then cut the wire on both sides of his jaw. He slowly pulled himself off the fence. Phew!
We named him at this moment...."Jaws." J is worried that if people use him for stud service they will be afraid of his name, so his breeding name will be "Jaws of Life." He stuck his nose through a few more times and kind of nipped at Hammy, but he also got shocked a few more times and didn't seem as interested in the fence by the end.
After we fed him some more (happy belly, happy pig), J went out with a carrot stick (stick and string, not veggie) and started to scratch his back. Jaws was shy at first, but relaxed into it slowly. J talked with him the whole time and it seemed to help. So we'll work on loving him a bit, giving him a chance to meet Hammy through the fence, and get used to his surroundings. We're also going to contact the vet about trimming his tusks. At this point, we have told the kids that absolutely NO bodies or body parts go into the pen with Jaws. Daddy and I will feed him until we get his tusks taken care of and we get to know him better.
When we came in tonight, J told me that he was really tired of how boring our lives had become. I told him I'd try harder...and reminded him that we could pick up our new doeling tomorrow - bringing the total of goat kids on the property to five! As much craziness as we have going on here, I wouldn't trade it for the world.
Now, I have to get to sleep because my goat alarm clock will be yelling at me at the crack of dawn "Miiiiilk me, miiiiiiilk me." And who knows what excitement tomorrow will bring.
No comments:
Post a Comment