Today Miguel has the day off so I was left unsupervised on the farm. El Jefe with no oversight is a dangerous thing.
I fed all the pigs, then I made up a couple of pallets for the cows. The first one had grapes, papaya, and watermelon along with some cabbage and various greens.
I then made up a second pallet with mangos and pumpkins. The cows couldn’t decide what to eat first, and they were still full from the bale of hay from earlier. They looked pretty happy when I left.
I also checked in on the little pigs who were sick. They all looked good except the spotted one, the one that is not 34 is coughing a bit. Looks like he needs a follow up shot.
There was also a cougher out in the main paddock. I didn’t see who but we will find him and get him treated.
I fed the little pigs in the barn a case of papaya, which they loved. I also fed them two bunches of really nice bananas. They should be passed out by now, feet up in the air.
Piglets in the hospital enjoying their lunch. Lettuce, grapes, bananas, and papaya. Yes, I peeled the bananas again.
Today #35 went back to the main paddock from the hospital/nursery. She was looking strong and was to the point of hogging all the food and keeping the smaller pigs from eating so she earned a trip back to the normal world. There was some sweet justice in grabbing a pig that’s knocking everyone around and biting and putting her butt back in the paddock to fend for herself. I never have liked bullies.
#38 is a pig that is with all the young pigs, but she is way bigger than everyone else. At least 80 pounds and probably 100. At this size, you can’t just do what you want with the pig by hand. Unfortunately #38 has gotten the funk that the other little pigs have and she needed some medicine. The problem is, she’s just too big to grab and haul to the barn. Miguel and I decided to just hold her down in the regular paddock and treat her. Yeah, that sounds easier said than done. I was trying to work on apples so I didn’t want to get dirty. I prepared the medicine and told Miguel to grab to pig so I could give her an injection. Suddenly the lethargic pig was full of energy. Miguel rode her around a couple of laps before we finally were able to work together and get her on the ground. The good news is we were able to get some medicine into her and today she is bright eyed and curly tailed.
The rest of the pigs who are in the barn convalescing all look great except for 27, 29, 36, and 37. Actually 36 and 37 look fine but I want to keep them in observation for a few days longer to make sure they are ok. 27 and 29 need to fatten up a bit, they are looking a bit puny. Once some of the other pigs are out of there the remaining pigs will have more food than they can eat. This will let them quickly put on some body condition before we turn them back out into the regular paddock. If they don’t put on condition fast enough, we’ll just put them in with the next batch of 20 pigs. Kind of like holding them back a grade in elementary school. They go from being the runt to the big kid in class.
We are continuing to work on the sickness running through the new pigs. 33 and the other bigger pigs have had their second shot of Enroflox and have been placed back into the outside paddock with their peers. We have kept the little pigs inside the barn and continued with their rich diet and special care. We have also kept an ear out for coughing pigs in the outside paddock and have now added 34, 35, 36 and 37 to the barn.
35 and 37 looked bad when they came to the barn. They were heading the way of Roscoe when we brought them in. They were still able to get around but not very quickly and not for long. In another couple of days if left untreated they would be dead.
The good news is that the Enroflox REALLY works. When 35 was put in the barn it took me a day to be able to get out there to give him the medicine because of my work schedule. Miguel said, Jefe, you need to hurry. He looks bad. So I make it out there late that evening and he is barely conscious. I gave him 1.5cc of Enroflox and 1.5cc of Liquamycin and by the next morning he was up and running around feeling great. That stuff is expensive but it sure does the job.
This is a good example of how we handle antibiotics on our farm. We get asked if our animals are antibiotic and hormone free. The answer is what you are reading now. If they are deathly sick, we treat them. The same way you would treat your kids, with love and care, and the best that modern medicine has to offer. If they have a sniffle that will go away on its own, we let it run its course. What we do not do is give any medicines as a preventative to disease. That’s the real problem with livestock handling in the US.
#34 1.5cc Liquamycin IM, 1.5 ccs Enroflox sub q 12/16/14
#35 1.5cc Liquamycin IM, 1.5 ccs Enroflox sub q 12/17/14
#36 1.5cc Liquamycin IM, 1.5 ccs Enroflox sub q 12/17/14
#37 1.5cc Liquamycin IM, 1.5 ccs Enroflox sub q 12/18/14
Some of the sick pigs, with their head in the trough.
This morning the sick pigs received the white glove service of Casa de la Ninja. They have already had two bowls of water, plus they had for breakfast:
A gallon of raw milk
1 quart of muscadine grape juice
20 oz of sour cream
10 oz of cottage cheese
Smoked Gouda cheese(smoked here on farm)
Turkey stuffing
Three bags of grapes
Two bunches of peeled bananas
And some various other goodies.
They are now piled on top of one another under the heat lamp snoozing.
Only 29 is still coughing. The rest seem to have stopped already. The littlest one needs more time in the stall to gain weight. He is looking poor and isn’t bouncing back, partly because the bigger pigs are pushing him out of the way, especially 33 who is a bully. Bullies go back to the normal paddock first so don’t worry, he will get his comeuppance.
Pork products are coming back in stock, including sausage.
Monday I’m going to go pick up two hogs from Dean Street Processing, and drop off two more at Acre Station Meat Farm. That means we will have a limited supply of pork available next week. I say limited because these two hogs are already sold, as are the follow-up hogs, but I will snag a few of the choice cuts for our own use and for a few of you folks who’ve been waiting on some Ninja Pig. Going forward we should have some pork available on a pretty much continuous basis on into spring when we will have a lull in supply and then come summer we should be back into pork steadily.
For those who only know pork as a pork chop, here is a very well written article on pork cuts and usage by a mentor of mine, Walter Jeffries of Sugar Mountain Farm. Walter’s website is a large part of the inspiration for our website and he farms in a similar method to what we do.
For those of you who don’t like pork chops, or anything from a hog besides bacon, you really need to try farm raised pork. You’ve never had pork till you’ve had the real thing. It’s night and day difference, I promise.
As I’ve said here before, the initial purpose of this blog was simply to take notes on what we do here on the farm. The fact that it gives insight into our lives for our friends and customers is just a happy coincidence. Today we treated the stable mates of Roscoe the pig for pneumonia. They were not in nearly the same shape as Roscoe and proved to be a challenge for Miguel to catch however I didn’t want to wait till they were in dire straits before beginning treatment. Better to get this stuff knocked out now and have them go on about their happy lives never to need treatment again.
We also bought new ear tags for pigs with a new numbering sequence.
We had an assembly line set up for this treatment. Miguel was in the paddock with the pigs catching them. He tossed them over the gate. Wait, tossed isn’t the right word. He picked them up and handed them to Justin, who then walked the pig to the barn where I was setup playing doctor. I took the pig from Justin and sat on it, holding it in place. I then administered the shots needed and then placed the pig in the stall with Roscoe and his friends.
Here is what we did today. I am remembering the drug names vs. going back to the barn and actually looking them up. I’m sure I spelled them wrong and I’ll correct it when I get over there tomorrow, with some pics of the drugs for the records.
#26 “Roscoe” received 1.5ccs of Enroflox, sub-cutaneously. This was Roscoe’s last treatment before he’ll be put back in the paddock in a few days.
#27 1.5ccs of Enroflox sub-q and 1.5ccs of Liquimyasin IM
#28 1.5ccs of Enroflox sub-q and 1.5ccs of Liquimyasin IM
#29 1.5cc Liquamycin IM, 1.5 ccs of Iron IM and 1.5 ccs of Vitamin B IM
#30 1.5cc Enroflox sub-q
#31 1.5cc Enroflox sub-q
#32 1.5 cc Enroflox sub-q
#33 1.5 cc Enroflox sub-q
Everybody but Roscoe will need a follow-up course of shots in 48 hours which means Monday night. Then they can stay another day or so and be turned back in the paddock with their friends.
Enroflox 100 antimicrobial from Summit Equine in ApexTetracycline antibiotics, from Tractor Supply in Fuquay.
One of the downsides to buying feeder pigs is that we always seem to get some that are sick. They aren’t sick when we buy them, but within a few days of arrival some of them always seem to develop something.
So of course after last weekends pig wrangling we ended up with a pig that was coughing. Coughing, just like in humans, can be a sign of a sniffle coming on, or it can by full fledged pneumonia setting in.
Coughing pig, but everything is still ok.
So I noticed that this pig had a bit of a cough. I pointed him out to Miguel and said lets keep an eye on him. Within a few days this was what we had.
Rosco the pig, on death’s door and on the way to the vet.
A temperature of 106, difficulty breathing, pretty much passed out all the time but pooping and peeing at least so the internals are still working. This picture was taken in our barn bathroom where we keep a heather to keep the pipes from freezing. Miguel had made up this box in the warm for this little pig but the next day he still looked about to die so I hauled him off to the vet to have them take a look. Based on how the pig looked, I knew he was a goner, but now 5 other pigs were coughing so we had to find out what the problem was. Pigs are like kids in daycare. When one gets it, they all seem to share it around. The vet checked this little pig into the hospital and actually Heather put him in her office on a leather ottoman so I couldn’t ask for them to be nicer to the pig, which was nice because I was sure he was done for. The vet said he’d treat him and call me the next day to let me know how he was doing and also to tell me what was wrong with him.
The next day my phone rang and I saw the vets number. My heart sank because I knew that he’d be telling me that my little pig was dead but at least I’d find out what was going on and hopefully be able to save the other sick pigs. The vet sounded a bit down so that doubled my knowledge that the pig had died but much to my surprise, he said the pig was doing great and had made lots of friends at the hospital. Happy and surprised I told him I’d be down that afternoon to pick him up.
That afternoon I arrived to find this.
Playing in the shavings, Roscoe the pig.
They had named the pig Roscoe and in only one day he really had made lots of friends. He was eating watermelon, spinach, and fruit. The vet had gone to the grocery store to buy him fresh produce to eat which I thought was especially nice since produce is what he eats normally on our farm. Basically, the vet had prepared some home cooking for him. Nice touch. Roscoe was burying himself in the shavings and coming up to everybody who entered the stall and allowing them to pet him. It was hard to remember that he will be a 300 pound hog at some point because folks, he was seriously cute playing in the stable.
I needed to transport Roscoe back to the house. He still had a touch of pneumonia so I knew I couldn’t take him in the back of an open truck. I could however take him in the Avalanche because the back is closed. But since he was feeling so good I couldn’t just place him in a crate because he’d jump out. Here was my high-tech solution.
Roscoe, ready for transport.
Roscoe didn’t fight or flee. He squealed just a bit when I picked him up but quickly settled down as soon as I placed him in the crate. A single bungee cord held the contraption together and Roscoe was ready for his ride home.
Roscoe, ready to be chauffeured home.
When I got home, I cleaned up the stall where Benjamin had stayed before, our normal hospital stall. The setup for a 2500 pound bull and a 35 pound pig is slightly different (insert sarcasm). Roscoe got fresh water, fresh fruit (I peeled his bananas, I’m a sucker) and a heat lamp to help stay warm. Today we will wrangle up the other coughing pigs, place them in the barn with Roscoe, ear tag them, give them some antibiotics to get them over this pneumonia. A few days in the barn and they should be right as rain.
This weekend was a pretty busy one for me. After working all week in my day job which has its own set of issues, I arrived home Friday to interview a very nice young lady who was attending NC State and looking to get some work on a farm. After reading her resume, and talking to her for a few minutes I suggested to her that she is more qualified than I am to be a farmer and that she’s not going to learn enough at our farm to justify her time. I wish I had a place for her, she’s a really smart and accomplished lady.
After she left, I spent some time working in the barn before meeting two different customers who wanted to buy meat. It’s still the best part of this gig to meet customers, and to meet their families. One of them on Friday had young girls and they were on a search for humane beef that their daughter was ok with purchasing. She’d learned about factory farming and was now refusing to eat meat that wasn’t raised ethically and humanely. I gave as good of an explanation as I could, standing in the dark with nothing to point to and show her. I think she was satisfied but I guess we’ll know when they show back up and buy more beef.
Or not. That’s one of the downsides to this business, sometimes people don’t come back for more product and your don’t necessarily find out why. Was it too expensive? Did they revert back to store-bought meat? Did they find someone closer? I wish I could have taken her on a tour and showed her the cows and how happily they live on our farm. I think that would have cemented her desire to buy from us. Anyway, it was nice to be able to close the week with some sales off of the farm.
Saturday my day started with a ride to Zebulon and picking up 13 pigs from a farmer there, Howard and his grandson Stephen. Howard was what my father would have called “a card” or “a bird.” I think today we’d call him a crazy old coot. He was a nice man and was certainly entertaining. Dustin went with me and we had some adventure getting the trailer backed into their driveway because it was so tight but Dustin kept a lookout for me and I just took over the state road for a few minutes while I backed in. Luckily nobody came by so we had the whole road to ourselves, which was handy because we were taking up the whole road! Stephen had all the pigs already loaded in the back of a truck so all we had to do was transfer the pigs from his truck to our trailer and we were done in five minutes. $60 per pig x 13 pigs, $780 worth of swine. These were Duroc and some other cross of a few heritage breeds, mainly Duroc. I forgot my ear tags so I crossed my fingers and snuck back home with no issues. It’s a $5000 fine PER PIG if you don’t have your ear tags so $65,000 in fines was riding with me. The ear tagger in permanently in the trailer now. I’m not making that mistake again.
After I got home with the pigs, Miguel and Justin were moving pigs from one of our paddocks to another. This was to make room for the new pigs. Justin looked somewhat defeated and Miguel (who had the flu but was still at work) looked tired. Turns out the pigs were simply running through the wire back into the paddock as fast as those two were putting them out. I hopped out of the truck and jumped into the paddock to help move the pigs while Justin stayed on defense keeping the pigs in their new paddock. Kind of a pig goalie.
Prior to arriving at the farm, I had lamented that I’d gotten a big of “pigginess” on my pants and I needed to change. Just a small spot on my pants. After dragging about 6 pigs through the mud and I don’t want to think about what else, I was covered head to toe in a rich cake of pigginess. Sweating, dirty, stinky, and tired I went over to the house and stripped out of my clothes. I didn’t have a place to wash and I was too dirty to go any further than the door of the house. Luckily I had some clothes I’d dropped there earlier which were covered in “cowiness” which smells not nearly as bad. Plus it was dry. I slipped on those clothes and ran back out the door because Dustin and I had a class to take in Durham at 11.
We arrived in Durham, just off of Briggs Avenue at Bountiful Backyards for a mushroom growing class I’d seen advertised. I’ve been told that growing mushrooms is a no brainer if you’ll just learn how. The last time I went to a class like this it was hippie central. In fact when I told SWMBO about some of the stuff we’d had to do in this class, she laughed till she cried (I’m not the best hippie in the world)and she still laughs disturbingly when the topic comes up. So with trepidation, Dustin and I attended the class, with me trying to stay downwind of everyone because I smelled like a pig riding a cow through a rendering plant. The instructors introduced themselves and were very nice but a bit crunchy. However a few minutes in we learned that our instructors were Dr. Khalid Hameed and Dr. Rytas Vilgalys. Both professors of mycology at Duke University! Holy cow, talk about driving a nail with a sledge hammer. Needless to say we learned some things at this class and came home with some logs inoculated with mushrooms. Quite a value for the money spent.
So when we got back from the mushroom class, it was time to unload the pigs into the pig pen. I like to let them settle down in the trailer after the ride back. It’s a closed environment and the calmer they are the easier the transfer goes later. Justin, Miguel and I went to work transferring the new pigs into the pen. The jobs were:
Justin catches the pigs in the trailer. Once he has the pig secured, and all the other pigs have run to the front of the trailer, I open the door and take the pig from Justin.
I then take the pig to Miguel who opens the gate to the pig pen and puts the pig into the pen. He then closes the gate behind the new pig and we wash, rinse, repeat.
About 2/3 of the way through the load of pigs, Miguel dropped one of the pigs who only fell about 2 inches. However it was now loose! Another Flash Gordon?! Nah, this pig was more of Yogi Bear.
This is more of my speed for a pig.
We quickly worked him back to the gate and walked him in. Crisis averted!
Saturday night we had dinner with all of our friends and Ron and Katie’s house. It was a Christmas party where everyone was dressed up formal, except me. Not smelling like a pig and wearing pants was about as far as a I made it. I did smell like a lot of soap! With great food, great company, and lots of Katie’s famous punch, we chatted and laughed our way to midnight when I finally said I had to go before I passed out. I’d been up since 4am so it had been a long day. It was a great time though! Thanks Katie and Ron!
Sunday was another day of pig wrangling. We try to get 20 pigs at one time so that we have a group that can finish together 8 months later. With thirteen in hand, I needed another seven or so and I had found another nine pigs in Robbins, NC. Five were with one farmer for $50 each with anther Duroc and something cross and the final four were a Glouchester and Land Race/Duroc mix for $60 each. The population of Robbins, NC is about 1100 people so the luck of finding two farmers with pigs at the same time was just awesome. That saved me a lot of driving.
I came home to unload all the pigs in the paddock with Saturday’s lot, and to meet Miguel’s friends Jose and Irvin. Jose has let us borrow indefinitely his carnitas pot and Miguel was making a batch of carnitas when I got back.
Our new carnitas pot, full of porky goodness. That bit of orange is Miguel’s hat barely visible through the steam
Since Jose was helping us out with the pot, I let him have one of our country hams we had hanging. I can’t sell them since they aren’t inspected, but I can let a friend have one for free. No harm in that.
After taking the Mrs. to see the new bull, I came back to the house and took another of many showers for the weekend. I then put on PJs and went into the kitchen where I had a 1/4 bushel of beans, two pumpkins, a bushel of apples, and a dirty kitchen to contend with. It worked out perfectly because SWMBO already had carnitas for dinner so I was left to my own devices in the kitchen. After cleaning the kitchen, I processed all the apples and made apple sauce.
Canned home-made apple sauce
I also processed the two pumpkins and make wifely approved pumpkin pie mix, which I then vacuum sealed, labeled, and froze.
Home made pumpkin pie filling, made from our pumpkins and ready for the freezer. This is enough for 12 pies.
This is a SWMBO invention. You freeze all the pie filling then when you want pumpkin pie, you just thaw out the filling and drop it into a pie crust and bake. Nearly instant home-made pumpkin pie! Mmm, pumpkin pie.
I should mention that in all this, I actually didn’t do any farm work this weekend. Miguel and Justin both worked all day on Saturday, and Justin worked a half day on Sunday. I was the one running around doing everything else while they fed and took care of the animals. It’s a busy place on a farm.
With everything put away in the kitchen, I gave the kids each a small bowl of apple sauce and went to go sit down on the couch for a bit to watch Agent’s of Shield. I’ve missed the last few episodes since I pretty much don’t watch TV and the family was waiting on me to catch up. Three episodes later, and one whole jar of apple sauce later (small bowls were not enough), everyone was caught up. At that point, I went to lay down in the bed because I was cold. Strangely, I fell asleep almost immediately which wasn’t the plan. Another night of missed opportunity to read to the kids. Luckily SWMBO got everyone to bed.
We purchased 12 pigs from a farmer friend of our a few months ago. They were mostly grown but not yet finished. We purchase feeder pigs from them as well so it worked out well to grab these other pigs at the same time. The pigs were cut (castrated) males and unbred gilts (girls who have never had babies). They were being bred for meat so we put them in their own paddock and finished them out.
Yesterday I posted that we’d taken the first two pigs to the processor. They were loaded in full sight of all the other pigs and we may have mentioned where they were headed in front of the other pigs. This has some bearing on the rest of this story but first let me share another story.
A few years back, we were processing extra roosters. The chickens are the domain of SWMBO and all I was in charge of was processing. I do next to nothing with the chickens except get bloody. Picking which chickens were actually roosters and should go and which were chickens and should stay was all up to darling Mrs. and she picked the offending roosters out, placed them in a box, and stacked them there for me to deal with as I could. She them promptly went back to the house and left me to it. I began my day working through roosters and had most of them done before I was called away for a few minutes. When I returned and grabbed the next chicken, I found an egg in the box with the “rooster”. I called the chicken whisperer back to the barn and had her explain how this “rooster” had squeezed out an egg. We had quite a chuckle over how hard the rooster had to work to become a chicken to avoid the axe.
Now back to our pigs. 12 pigs, all slated to go to the processor this month and next. Suddenly we have this.
I took the day off today. Instead, today was a farm day, all day. I started about 4:45 cooking breakfast. Bacon we smoked ourselves and an omelette from our eggs with cheese I also smoked. By 6am I was in the shop working on our new pig trailer. This trailer is a hydraulic lowering trailer that will sit down flat on the ground via raisable wheels. We are modifying an old flat-bed trailer that we had left over from the old days. Once the hydraulic axles are made, we’ll make a cage on the flat deck of the trailer with a gate where we can let the pigs in. The idea is we put the trailer in the pig paddock, put some food in the trailer, the pigs walk on to eat, then we close them in. Lower the wheels and then you drive the pigs to wherever they need to go next. It’s the Cadillac of pig moving.
This mornings project was to make pin bosses for the cylinders. I already had some 1.5″ steel round bar so I just cleaned it up on the lathe and drilled out the 1″ interior dimension. I was able to make 6 pieces, just what I needed, before the guys from the well company showed up at 8:30.
Solar well installation
The well project is finally coming together after all the earlier work we did. NW Poole is doing the work and they are installing solar panels, inverters, wiring, etc. The batteries and battery table are courtesy of yours truly.
There were some missing parts so the well will be finished tomorrow rather than today as we’d hoped. More pictures to come as it gets closer to completion.
Pigs walking off of the trailer, into the processor.
I had to leave the well project to go deliver two of our pigs to the processor in Bailey, NC. This is our first time using this processor, Dean Street Processing. They are new and are much closer than Acre Station where we’ve been taking our pigs (45 mins vs 2 hours drive time.) I had to spend some extra time since this was our first drop off but everything went great. The pigs walked right off the trailer and didn’t cause any fuss. They were rather odd-looking because our pigs looked like Godzilla in Tokyo compared to the commercial pink pigs that everyone else was dropping off. They were more than twice the size.
After settling up with the processor, I hurried back to Garner so I could go with Miguel to return the backhoe we used to bury Benjamin. After grabbing a quick lunch at El Toro, and returning with Miguel, I loaded the freezer truck with 250 pounds of beef and various other goodies and took off for Fayetteville to make a delivery. It took about 45 minutes to sort out all the beef, get an invoice written up, etc, then one hour drive time home to arrive at 5:30. I met with Miguel to review the day and plan for the rest of the week (that sounds much better than “BS for a minute on the day”).
After Miguel left I spent some more time in the shop and then came to the house for dinner. Ninja Cow brisket, leftover from yesterday. Then our friend Dana called to pick up some beef so back to the barn to get her fixed up with a big order and finally to the house at 7 to grab a shower.
It was a long but productive day. The freezers are a bit lighter and our customers are happy. Everything worked, and nobody got hurt. Sounds like a good day to me.
I then made up a second pallet with mangos and pumpkins. The cows couldn’t decide what to eat first, and they were still full from the bale of hay from earlier. They looked pretty happy when I left. 
