so many amazing products come from pigs bacon copa pork chops and the list goes on for these
reasons and more i'm bringing the gloucester old spot pigs back to the homestead this season
in a recent video i talked about the successes and failures that i've had with pasturing pigs
and why i've decided to try doing a deep litter system with them this year there's a link in the
video description down below to that video in case you missed it in that video i started the
process of building a deep litter pen for the pigs but i didn't get to finish i wanted to get
a little bit closer to completion since the pigs were coming soon i got 2.5 cubic yards of wood
chips loaded in the bed of my pickup truck and then added them to the ground in the pen
i really thought two and a half yards would get me a little bit deeper of a bed but it was rather
shallow i'll definitely have to get another load after getting the chips in we added ent conduit
to form the roof trusses these definitely won't support a snow load so i'll take the
tarp down that we'll use for the roof off for the winter though we did make a lot of progress
with the new shelter it wasn't quite ready in time for the pigs i decided it would be best
to first get the pigs into the normal receiving corral that i usually use and then i'd have the
opportunity to train them to electric fencing and then i could if i wanted at that point to
use them to build a new garden bed because they would be trained to electric fence
i got the corral set up with electric fencing and the water barrel now it was just time to wait for
the pigs to arrive so prior to last year i had not had any experience with pigs although i've
heard a lot about them and i've always been pretty fascinated by them training them to
the electric fence and watching them learn their boundaries with it and show respect for it was
cool to me we had the girl pig that was more aggressive and she bossed the other pig around
and when we got in the pen like she wanted us to know that we were in her space versus the boy who
was just really mellow all the time with this year it'll be fun to see how these pigs develop
let's see the pigs yeah we care any minute now what color do you think they'll be white or black
pigs are coming excited yeah what's with the headband there or the bandana i don't know
there's a lot of excitement in getting pigs again
obviously it's going to be a little bit different this year here come the pigs
they're both black yeah when i saw the pigs for the first time i was really surprised just how big
they were i got the pigs from you this year sight unseen normally it's not best practice to buy
livestock sight unseen but in this case because i had bought pigs from jennifer before and
worked with her own videos before i know that she's not gonna give me a bad pig by any means
just because it just didn't work out for me to get over there this year but uh can you tell us
about them real quick yeah so these are gloucester uh old spots and they're from my um not the same
mother that you've had from last year but lucinda who's a younger one that i have and they're
they're a little over four months old so they're pretty big getting them now as late or as old
as they are is my fault because jennifer wanted to get him to me a few weeks ago but
i had my trip coming up to justin rhodes homestead last time the pigs were a lot
smaller this time when she opened the door and we saw how big they were i was a little
taken back because i expected like the cute little pigs and these guys already looked
pretty huge because of their size and their desire to stay in that trailer
we didn't have the easiest time getting the pigs out they did not want to come out of the trailer
we got one out and then the girl who was left behind
she was adamant that she was staying in the trailer and she was screaming
she was so angry and so upset that we were making her do what we wanted
as soon as she hit the ground and the grass and saw the other pig in the pen eating she was just
like completely chill like okay this is my new home here we go see okay now that that's over
the last two times that i brought pigs onto the homestead they would immediately challenge
the fans which was good because then i could see how they reacted were they going to run
into the fence and tear it down were they going to run away from the fence once i got that baseline
established i could adjust accordingly these pigs this year though went nowhere near the fence
they did not challenge it at all this left me a little concerned with just leaving them because
i didn't know are they gonna challenge the fence when i'm not there and get caught in it
tear it up whatever jennifer the pick breeder she recommended that we move the electric fence to the
perimeter of the crowd so it was pretty close to the cattle panels this would make it less likely
that the pigs would want to run forward through the fence thus tearing down the electric fencing
after waiting as long as i could to see if the pigs were going to challenge the fence at all i
finally had to give up because it was time to go to dan's partner's house for dinner it was dark
outside when little buddy and i returned i did check on the pigs the fencing was still intact and
they were sleeping soundly later that night though a big windstorm came through the area and we lost
electricity the electric fence for the pigs runs on a battery so that wasn't an issue but my heat
lamp in the chick brooder definitely does not run on battery it went out with no heat lamps for the
chicks and it being a chilly night i had no choice but to bring them indoors to keep them warm what
do you think of the chicks little buddy they're cute but the only downside to it is that um when
they grow up they'll start to get ugly which is sad did they wake you up at all this morning no
not really they woke me up at like five o'clock in the morning with all their chirping sometime
overnight though i don't know if it was provoked by the windstorm or something else but the pigs
decided to challenge the fence and it looked like the fence lost that fight it was pretty tore up
so after a couple days in the house the chicks were getting a little bit on the
stinky side so it was time to get them back out into the chickbrooter the electricity was
back on therefore the heat lamps were back on so there's no reason why they
couldn't return to the breeder i'm also happy to report that since the filming of
my video of getting the chicks i've only lost one more chick they seem to
have stabilized by now and i haven't lost any more chicks in the last week storms coming in
we haven't had any more issues with the pigs regarding the fencing they have not messed
with that at all they seem to be respecting it now everything has been going pretty well
why aren't you guys eating your pigs go eat what you don't like the rain i
added that sheet over the chicken breeder to help retain heat because as you know
it's been a little bit chillier the last few days so hopefully it's been working we
peel the layer back and reveal our chicks or which would you go this way
everybody good nobody's dead
with the chicks taken care of it was time to get back to working on the new pig shelter
the dimensions of this pig pore is 16 by eight but the metal conduit that i bended to
create the rafters for the roof the tarp that conduit is 10 feet long so we needed a tarp that
was 16 by 10 however i could only find a tarp that was 16 by 12. i wanted the tarp to come down here
not all the way down here we want to leave this open for ventilation but because our
tarps too long it's covering it so my idea is we should treat this like a rain fly on a tent
and string it to stakes in the ground so it'll come out more like this to allow air flow through
and also that'll give us um a better you know what i mean so the rain will fall further away from the
shelter and avoid getting everything wet so we just finished tying and staking the tarp down
um i am now calling this the pig tent because it completely looks like a tent
on the outside and thanks to my assistant adele who did the knot tying for the rope
um i think it'll work for this year this is a cool little shelter i'm liking the way this came out
cool little shelter right yes you look very dry in there what do you think of that shelter
pretty nice yeah the chicken's getting out of the rain going under the trailer everything seems to
be going really well um the fencing is working the pigs respect it we haven't had any issues
but we really need to make sure they're trained to the water um since this will be their main source
for the rest of their time in here so dan's done a little bit of training with them on um
the nipple but just in case we're gonna use some peanut butter on there and we haven't fed
them yet so they're really hungry they might eat meat um we'll put some peanut butter on
there and see if that attracts them to the water okay let's do it the safe pinky camera
hey dude look at this do you like that right here he's not interested in the peanut butter
at all i don't blame you a pig after my own heart come on hey i hate peanut butter as much as i do
oh hi look smell that do you like that i can't stick this back in the container now that you
yeah you can it's just this is all i use it for okay let me do some actual oh hey
what's that right up here
oh peanut butter
i've been making sure that they have water in their hey not a scratching post
not okay good gravy disgusting i've been making sure they have water in their bowl here just
in case they haven't figured out the water or barrel yet so they're probably not that thirsty
training wasn't so successful i think they're just hungry and ready to eat so i'm going to feed them
you're so gross hey you know what smells worse than wet dog wet pig yeah for sure i'm really
happy to tell you guys that everything's been going great with the pigs so far they're really
living up to their breed trait of being docile and super chill be sure to check back real soon
because we're just getting started this season we have more videos coming more new animals
coming but in the meantime you have this video right here that youtube has picked for you they
have custom selected it based on your viewing preferences youtube says you're gonna like this
video so go ahead and click on it and see if they're right we'll see you guys next time