New pig

Well like most houses, we have a picky eater and a drive by eater. My daughter is the picky eater and my son the drive by eater. And if you don't know what a drive by eater is, it is a child that eats only when they want to by snacking all day. It leaves us with a lot of boxes of crackers and cookies left open and gone stale and inedible. I felt like we were throwing a lot of food away and the chickens can't always keep up with all the scraps that we toss to them and we end up with crows and stray cats sneaking their way over and under the fence to munch on the leftovers.  So we thought of an idea that would help us utilize all this food that kept going to waste, and it came upon us when we were at a friends house shelling peas.  This friend told us that they feed the purple hull pea shells, which are inedible to humans or somewhat unappetizing anyways, and mashed peas to their pigs.

The thought, how awesome it was that these animals were eating something that would just get thrown in the compost. Not that I am against compost, it is a much needed thing, but I love bacon and to think for a mere 50$ I could have my very own too. And in six to seven months have a years worth of pork.....where do I sign up??

It took a little while, but we eventually found an 8 week old female Berkshire piglet.  And boy is she loud. I just thought my chickens were noisy but when she wants to be heard you can here her a quarter mile away. Of course most of the time she is settled down and not making all that noise but she will let you know she does not like being picked up, but loves to be scratched.

Her admiration towards being scratched behind the ears is what got both of us in to trouble the first time I put her in her pin, which is made of cattle panels. She could fit her head through the larger holes on the panels and was nosing up to me while I was trying to feed her some kale, trying to get me to give her a good scratching.  Well she got what she was looking for a good scratching behind the ears and didn't want me to quit. She decided she would try to reach me and reach a little further discovering she could fit through the fence...well crap...now she was loose and didn't want to go back into that pin when it was so much fun to run in the yard.

She ended up going under the neighbors house trying to explore and no doubt making me worry thinking she would damage the neighbors plumping or worse the gas lines. We had to lure her out with a bucket of feed and a handful of pears. Thankfully she is a sucker for pears which we have a full tree of.  She squealed her little head off all the way back to her newly adopted pin, which we call chicken tractors that we keep our young chickens in to raise them up either for meat or laying hens.  its a 4 foot by 8 foot pin that is movable. She does fine in there for now. We quickly discovered why some people opt to put there pigs in electric fence though as this wouldn't have happened if we had also.

So she is here eating and making bacon for us. I must say she has eaten everything we have given her even a half eaten corn cob which seemed to be one of her favorites. I no longer feel like we are wasting food. And looking forward to having a years worth of pork for what little entails of taking care of her in the evenings. I hope for the day when we have enough room to keep a pair and raise piglets. But until then this is a great way to help us be a tad bit more frugal and teach our children that food doesn't just come from a store.  It is such a reassurance to know where our food is coming from with all the recalls you see now days. Definitely the best 50$ I have spent in a while.