Our friends Tommy and Chuck raise feeder piglets for us. Whenever they have a litter that is weaned, we drive over and pick up the whole lot which means a new batch for us, and no Craigslist crazies for them. It works out well and they are our preferred breeder. However Tommy and Chuck both work full time jobs and aren’t always available. The pigs you see above are SLIGHTLY bigger than feeder pig size. In fact, they are market size. With the bad winter, their schedules, my schedule, and a whole comedy of errors, these pigs lived most of their lives at Chuck’s place and the first time we could get them was last Saturday. Don’t worry, these pigs will be going to a different market since they haven’t been raised in our program. We received 11 pigs with an average weight of 267 pounds each.
These pigs are pretty big and fat, however they will loose about 20% of their body weight by being on our farm. I’ve not really seen our pigs next to a conventional pig. The difference is this
compared to this.
You can see it in these pigs behavior and in how they look the difference of working for your food vs. unlimited handouts. These pigs lay down and go to sleep pretty much anywhere and any time. In fact, while I was talking to Chuck just after loading, one of the pigs started snoring! This is 5 minutes after being loaded into a strange trailer. I’ve never heard a pig snore before, it was pretty funny. However it was also pretty telling. Carrying around all that extra weight does to a pig what it does to us, none of it good. We are processing one of the pigs to see what the meat is like and do some side by side comparisons. We’ll know in a few weeks what we have and we’ll report back here I’m sure. In the meantime, these pigs are going onto the Ninja diet. We’ll get them into shape.
If I lived closer I’d come work for your ninja diet!
It’s easy. Lot’s of rooting, lots of veggies, and lots of pushing and shoving with your neighbors. You’ll be a lean, mean, bacon machine in no time!