Adventures in Prepping….Learning Curves
Sharing mistakes learned from raising pigs. The pekin hen eggs never hatched. Our mix breed (pekin and rouen) ducklings are growing faster on grass than chick starter and three ducklings are now orphans because something eat the mother. There is always a learning curve best to learn now than later……We were lucky enough to save the remaining piglets and not loose them all! Although hogs saved many farms in the first depression, we think raising one a year is more than a enough for us. We do not use Diatomaceous Earth as it will kill off the beneficial insects and bees!
5 Responses to Adventures in Prepping….Learning Curves
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Thanks but it doesn’t look like it’s in the cards for us to do pigs again. They take up a lot of resources and require a lot more maintenance than our other livestock. I personally prefer dairy goats at this point but it was a good experiment.
MrsNewAmericaNow
August 23, 2012 at 10:25 pm
Great Update&Vid. My oppion is do Pigs one more time:-] I know it is hard becauce you put a part of yourself in it.(been there). But if you stop now i think it will leave you with more questions than answers.
JRSKICK1
August 23, 2012 at 11:24 pm
We are trying everything we can to see what works best for us and pig breeding is not one of them. I think I prefer goats to pigs. Thank you for the comment!
MrsNewAmericaNow
August 23, 2012 at 11:53 pm
True about the bugs, we have the Japanese pine beetle in our area now. We were told that pigs over all have an 80% mortality rate. It was week 4 that gave us the most grief! I thought the first two weeks would be the most telling. It has been a very cool spring and it doesn’t get to warm. She was a first time mom and we missed her giving birth, maybe some could have been saved if we were there? The female piglet left with her is huge!
MrsNewAmericaNow
August 24, 2012 at 12:31 am
Even if you’ve been a farmer all your life there is always new diseases, new poisonous plants being introduced, different bugs from other countries, and even different predators moving through the area that will confound you. I do have to say though that we don’t lose 80% of our piglets. Do you have a seperator? My most important advice for raising pigs is keep that sow cool. They will dry up or partially dry up if they get too hot. I agree with you that there are always new things to learn.
HedgeLiving
August 24, 2012 at 12:44 am