The Terrible Three

Look daddy, same as you!

So my first effort at pig breeding is going swimmingly. The piglets are now 12 weeks old and enjoying a lovely outdoor free range existance being fed naturally with barley, organic pig nuts and lots of fruit and vegetables. As well as having access to a large area to run and root and graze.

I am down to the terrible three and believe me they really are terrible. We have Brutus who is a bully and a brute. Literally heaves his brothers out of his way at the trough. He is also a supreme escape artist. He darts between two strands of electric fencing to escape. He has in turn taught Jockser (neck like a jockey's - well you know,) seen here in the picture mounting Redser. If you are not careful at feeding time they will trip you up dashing in front of you and between your legs. Plus they love to slobber you with muck particularly if you run down to feed them before leaving for work. They seem to have the ability to detect clean clothes.

They are still sneaking in to have a quick feed with mum and she, the silly ass allows them. The three of them are almost the same size as she is. She is totally fed up of them.

Redser, Jockser and Brutus

Brutus, Lady Lavinia and Jockser

They loved the warm weather we had recently and spent most of it stretched out. So far they have not taken to wallowing but it won't be long.

I was taken aback at how quickly their daddy Laertes and his brother grew (well gone at this stage) so I decided it was time to cut down to feeding once a day. I want them to reach weight slowly and not pile on the fat. They are understandably not a bit pleased about this and complain loudly every time they see me. Recently though I have been getting sacks of fruit and vegetables and the other day they made short work of figs, avocados, grapes as well as all the other more common stuff. Lots of very satisfied slurping.

Love Redser's "eye makeup"

I am waiting for them to grow a little bit before letting them into a new field as the fencing is slightly higher in it. Not keen on them ducking under it and out onto a busy road. But hopefully in a couple of weeks they will be on a full acre of lush green grass.

Can you imagine how good they will taste?

Life is Good

Since Laertes is a lazy article - to quote herself, I'm taking over our social media accounts. I'm getting bigger and stronger every week. Only trouble is so is himself and he is able to head butt me into the middle of next week.

My name is Lady Lavinia. I nibble herself's boots and she shouts "stop nibbling" at me.  I suppose we can relax here now and enjoy the sunshine as herself says she's keeping us for breeding (whatever that means).

We are loving this warm sunny weather and spend a lot of it sleeping.

The ground is dry and dusty now. It was awful in winter. I hated getting into bed with mucky trotters.

This is himself and this is where you find him most days now. He gets sunburned but he doesn't seem to care. I don't because I root up a big hole and surround it with dried grass and mud and snuggle down into it.

We get fed twice a day now. Breakfast is barley and organic pig nuts. She's been adding garlic powder for a few days now. We are not keen on it but are usually so hungry we eat it.

I try to nibble the grass under the hurty white stuff. Herself keeps saying she is moving us to the next field. Wish she'd hurry up.

Then in the evening she wheels out the wheel barrow and gives us fruit and vegetables. Laertes love avocados, beetroot leaves and tomatoes. I love tomatoes too so we fight over them. We both like melons, grapes, in fact everything sweet.

We get another bucket of barley and pig nuts with more garlic powder in the evening.

Every time a human appears we gallop over because you never know what you might get. We are always on the look out for food.

We have to learn how to wallow yet. Herself keeps saying she'll show us how to do it. Can't wait to see that.


Pigs have the life.

Give me an oul follow over on Twitter. I'm @rasherandsausag and I will be a lot better than Laertes at twittering.

Our Diet

Herself says that if you eat something do you ever wonder what it has eaten?

We are pigs so we are omnivores which means we eat basically the same as herself.  We love fruit, particularly sweet fruit like plums, pears and strawberries.  We eat them first and then later the other icky vegetables like carrots and potatoes and we are not keen on cabbage or broccoli.  Herself says we remind her of small children.

We also eat barley and we really love it.  Herself adds some water to it and we fight over who can keep their head in the pot longest.  Rasher usually bites me when I am greedy.

 Herself decided she was not going to feed us pig food because it has genetically modified soya and maize in it.  It actually says it on the label.  She asked a few feed manufacturers about getting GM free but only one even researched the possibility of getting some in.  It worked out to be about 4 times the price.

We have made a right mess of the garden and it's all mucky now with the rain.  But we root about under the grass and we find slugs, worms, grubs and roots.  This is why our noses are always dirty.  Herself says that people panic when they see the mess we make of land but we actually do a lot of good.  We turn the soil around very gently, aerating it and rotivating it.

When we become *whisper* "rashers and sausages" or even pork belly or ham we will taste more gamey because of our diet.  Our meat will be darker and have more flavour.  
diet
We are very happy with our diet so far and hope herself continues to get strawberries from the nice fruit and veg man.  He knows we love strawberries now and he always tries to give her some for us.

Tags: GM free feed  Pig rearing GM free  Pigs

Our First Post

This is our first post and we are very excited about it.  When herself first suggested we write a piggy blog, we didn't have a clue what she was on about.  But then she explained to us that there are lots of small people (and not so small) who haven't a clue that rashers and sausages come from us - shudder!  So maybe we should enlighten them.

She named us Rasher and Sausage (a bit unkindly we feel) however we are happy enough with our names now.  Sausage has a curlier tail and is slightly smaller than I am.

We were born in a lovely garden centre called Caragh Nurseries near Naas, Co. Kildare where Jo was our first "herself".  We had lots of brothers and sisters also called Middle Whites and we were a bit sad to leave them, especially as the new herself arrived down with a cat box to collect us.

When we arrived to Carpenters (the name of the old man who farmed in the traditional way with a cow byre, pig sty and stalls in the old barn for the cart horse).  Herself shoved us in a stable and shut the door so we couldn't escape. We had lovely deep straw and as we were tired we cuddled down into it and fell asleep.

After a couple of days she let us out into the walled garden full of lovely long grass.  We were very happy and straight away started rooting up all the grass searching for grubs and bugs underneath.  We get very dirty noses doing this, especially as it always seems to be raining here.

Now we have settled in and have turned our garden into what looks like a rotivated field.  But we like it like that.  We have permanently dirty noses and when we eat our barley bits of mud fall into it.  We love strawberries and when we eat them the juice dribbles down leaving rivulets through our muddy snouts.

We hope to write lots more posts about our adventures now and hope you will read them and make lots of comments.  After all we don't want to become breakfast really and we hope that you will help us stay as Rasher and Sausage.

Tags: Free Range Pigs  Middle White Pigs  Pig Farming