Hammy is NOT Pregnant

Well, Hammy's due date has come and gone.  We were really hoping that she was just not showing because she is a first time mommy and had a small litter brewing.  No luck.  Even with J's words of encouragement, "Babies or Bacon, Hammy.  You're choice," she has not produced.

Her due date was on Saturday.  I wanted to give her a few extra days just in case I miscalculated.  But with absolutely no signs of impending labor, we have to assume that she is without child.  A big faker, as J says.

One of the challenges about living on a working farm is that we really have to look at our animals as livestock, not pets.  As much as we love Hammy - her personality, her body conformation, her belly rubs - she is a pig and she eats like a pig.  Maintaining Hammy at her current weight means six pounds of feed a day plus at least one flake of hay.  In monetary terms, Hammy costs us about $1.50 a day or $45 a month to keep.  She needs to earn her living.  Literally.

Now I see the hypocracy in letting the horses live.  They easily eat as much as Hammy and have yet to produce anything that we can sell or eat.  But I guess until horse meat is accepted again in the US, the horses are safe.

So this week, we will be putting Hammy back in with her love, Jaws.  Jaws will surely be thrilled to have some female contact as he has been snorting away at the girls through the fence for the past two months.  I think we will actually leave the two lovebirds together for the next two months, just to make sure that the job gets done.  And if we're lucky, we might even end up with Fair pigs - pigs that are born in December or January and can be sold to 4-H kids for Fair.

It will actually work well.  Ruby is due somewhere around the 10th of September, so having Hammy out of the pen that Ruby is in will give her some alone time to prepare for birth.  Of course, Zeus (our stinky Boer buck) is sharing the pen with Ruby, but that is different than another pig.  And by the time we're ready to give Hammy her own space, we should have a shelter built and a fence divider in.

And if Hammy doesn't "take" this next time, we will be taking her to town.  It will be hard if it comes to that, but we're not a petting zoo and unless we can find a way to keep her for free, she'll end up in the freezer.  Maybe we should start a website "Save Hammy Fae" just in case.