Good afternoon!
I figured I’d hop on and give you guys an update of our 3 gilts we acquired on Memorial Day. What’s a gilt? A gilt is a female pig that has not yet farrowed (had babies).
So early May I saw an ad of a commercial pig farmer in eastern NC that had to get rid of 4000 piglets! He had a 10 piglet minimum. Dan and I had talked and thought we could handle 10 piglets. Well, before we reached out to the farmer, he had raised it to a 20 piglet minimum. Our facilities were (and are still) nowhere near ready for 20 piglets. As some may say, well luck had it but I believe it was divine intervention- another local farmer (about 30 minutes or so away) had seen the same ad. They decided to purchase 40 piglets. Kept them for about 3 weeks and got them used to no longer living on concrete and got them healthy enough where they felt confident in selling some to other farmers. We are so happy to have purchased our three piglets from Whisper Creek Farm. Holly and her husband (nicknamed Preacher Man) have been great to work with and I would recommend them to anyone. I’d even say that Holly has become a friend- and who couldn’t use a new friend? ☺️(Especially in these crazy times).
[One of our kiddos when we first got piglets]
Well for the first 6 days we had the piglets (from Memorial Day until the following Sunday) they were in our fenced backyard area being trained on the electric fence. It didn’t take them long to get it. Which both piglets and myself are thankful for- there wasn’t enough shade for them back there so I was rubbing their ears down with sunscreen to try to prevent sunburns. Two days before we moved them I wasn’t feeling the greatest and forgot to apply sunscreen that afternoon or the next morning. Poor things got even more pink and looked like they had been to Florida 😅.
[Piglets meeting Pigbert when moved to woods]
[Just after moving piglets into woods]
After they learned the electric fence, we then moved them over to a wooded lot. They are loving that so much. Rooting up lots of nuts and roots and grubs and Lord only knows what else. After about 8-10 days in the pen, the pigs ended up messing up part of Pigbert’s fence and so we ended up integrating Pigbert with them. They are all happy together- rolling in mud, rooting, eating, and taking naps together. Basically, just being pigs 😂🤷♀️. The piglets have easily gained 10-15 lbs since they’ve been here and they definitely look and seem happy.
[Pigbert and the piglets]
The kids have named the piglets. One came with the name Charlotte but we renamed “Queenie”. Another is mostly pink with some spots on her back side and they called her “Pinky”. And the other they have named “Oinksters”.
[Queenie]
[Another of Queenie being nosy 🐽 😂]
[Oinksters with Pinky in the background]
[Pinky when she was a bit sunburned just before moving to the wooded lot]
Well, I hope you each have a blessed evening and a wonderful weekend! Anything specific you are curious about as we are on our journey or what you’d like to see more of? Please let me know and I’ll try to include a post about it 🙂
Until Next Time!