Of our top ten things to do once we moved to Maine, raising pigs for pork may have been fourth (after having a garden, raising milking Devon cows, and raising chickens).  We had friends who knew where to get pigs, so we immediately reserved our three.  They came as cute little pink wiggly squeally things, and they were small enough to be lifted by their back leg from a truck to our prepared pen.  In the pen, we had an automatic waterer and grain feeder.  If you haven’t heard before: pigs are smart.  Therefore, the little pigs figured out how to use both the waterer and feeder in no time at all… then the growing began!

You would never believe that they started this little…

Every few seconds throughout the day, you could hear a pig lift up the aluminum cover to the grain feeder and then have it slam back down once he was done.  They loved to drink any extra milk or left over whey (from yogurt or cheese making).  They voraciously ate any left over bread or baked goods.  When it was harvest time, they learned to love all garden vegetables, garden plants, and fruit.  In fact, they just loved to eat…

Abigail showing off our pigs…

Soon, our smart and impatient piggies started to make their own alterations to the grain feeder with their snouts, to release more food at a time…and when they got big enough to “throw their weight around,” they would finally turn over the entire grain feeder and eat the grain from the top of the feeder, no longer having to wait until the food trickled down to the bottom.  Their eating and growing wasn’t the problem.  However, as pigs, they were also wasteful.  It was frustrating as you shoveled out their piggy waste along with large amounts of discarded spilled food that should have been high and dry in their feeder.

Smart piggies, waiting for a treat to eat!

Therefore, before the grain feeder became a pile of scrap metal, we pulled it out and then we started hand feeding our pigs.  Soon, we were buying large bags of tree fallen apples at the local orchard for the pigs, picking potatoes and boiling them for the pigs, then going out and picking more neighborhood apples for the pigs.

Buckets of yummy apples!

Hand fed and loving it!

Yes, our lives seemed to revolve around feeding the pigs… We were still feeding them their favorite grain and milk, twice a day, sometimes three or four times a day… First the pigs seemed too small, then too fat, then too lean?  Did I mention this was our first time raising pigs for pork?  How big do you think they are?  Your guess is as good as ours…

But boy did they grow!

Living large

In six months they grew from less than 30lbs to close to 300lbs… Their final weight surprised us all.  Their pork, however, not surprisingly, is really the best pork we have tasted.  All that hard work paid off.  Knowing and raising personally, our own piggies that we are about to eat, makes you more conscientious and more attentive…

Future goals would be to raise pastured pork.  We generally know that grass fed beef is healthier (takes longer to raise, but higher in good fatty acids).  Pastured pork would be great too… especially when there would be less shoveling of piggy waste!  (I am am sure my whole family is looking forward to that!)

But really, what I am looking forward to even more… is our smoked bacon and ham! They should be ready next week… Talk about living high off the hog!