Let it snow!

We received a decent amount of snow last night as you can see from the picture, and snow always seems to make chores on the farm a little harder. We had some snow drifts that were knee high as I was walking out to feed the pigs. I do not have a good picture but the baby pig that I call "Big Red" has this thing when her mom moves away from her to drink or eat, "Big Red" will then bury himself under the hair. One day Gretchen went in to the barn and couldn't find him; and then all of a sudden she saw some hay moving and he was hiding under some hay. It is currently 18f, but the pigs are almost 2 weeks now so they should be able to handle this weather much better with each day. Now my only worry is I have to drive through all of this to get to work tomorrow. Living in the country is great, however it takes more work to just get into town.

It was a big day for us.

Kansas weather can be crazy at times. This morning at 6 a.m., it was 45 and very little wind. Then when I left for work at 7 a.m., the temperature has dropped to 33, and even an hour later it was down to 23. Crazy Kansas weather. Here is one of the baby pigs that I call "Big Red", she keeps warm by cuddling up to her mother as best as she can. It is amazing seeing the size difference, her mother is around 400 lbs and then you have this 4 lb baby pig.

Another hard thing about the weather, is today was the day we were taking our hogs to a local processor.
It was our first experience with this, and it went fairly well. Sometimes they didn't seem to go where we wanted them to go, but with some time they all went in. It was a little bit of a bitter sweet moment, because we have grown fond of the pigs. Gretchen has mentioned a couple of times that it is a little sad, however we feel like we are also doing a better good by treating them humanely and selling locally. Here is an article that is much better than I could have ever said about the issue. http://www.westonaprice.org/healthissues/ethicsmeat.html
If you ever have any questions about our farm or what we do, please drop me an email. Also if you disagree I would love to hear your thoughts also.

Clean cute baby pigs

Our baby pigs are now a week old. Here is a cute picture of one of them. It was actually a great weekend and today we set a record with a high of 72. However the crazy Kansas weather is calling for a high of 37 tomorrow. I mean we will almost cut the temperature in half.

I know some people say that pigs are a dirty animal, but in reality they are very clean animal. Below I have a picture, no the picture is not that great of a quality because I took it with my cell phone,they but you will see the little pigs in the corner. Now this corner is the opposite corner that they sleep. What they are doing is going to the bathroom in that corner. They are just a week old and they know to go to the bathroom in a different location than they sleep. The mother will actually walk outside to use the restroom. Pigs really are one of the most entertaining animals to watch. You might have noticed that they like the mud, but their is a reason for that also. Pigs do not have sweat glands, so they coat themselves with the mud to keep cool. It is interesting they really are sensitive to the weather, can't take the cold or the heat (Kind of like me).

Tomorrow is a big day, as we will be taking most of our pigs to the locker. Gretchen will help me load them, but she isn't sure she can make the trip to El Dorado with me. But maybe we can get them up their in time to see Barak Obama. If you did not hear, Barack is speaking in El Dorado. I guess his grandmother is from their and the votes from Kansas could actually matter. Exciting times.

Its still cold outside...

I can't wait until spring gets here. Last night we had a low of 5 degrees.... Ouch!
Currently it is 19F. The cold weather sure makes more work taking care of all the animals. Tonight I cleaned their water tank out and got all of the ice chunks out. I then refilled the water, which will of course freeze tonight, however it looks like it will be warmer so it should melt. All 8 pigs seem to be doing great. The north sow with 7 piglets is such a good mom. Gretchen has been putting hay in a small door way to her house, to help protect against the wind; Then the next day all that hay has been moved to the mothers bedding, as she has made a nice THICK bed. It is really very interesting to watch. This weekend I will take more pictures of all the little ones.
But really who I am to complain about the cold, because Gretchen does most of the work during the week as I drive to my warm office job. I am a lucky guy, and those pigs get treated well by her.

Baby Pigs and a learning experience!

This weekend has been a VERY VERY busy weekend. Saturday was a COLD day with a high of 22F and a low of 11F, and of course one of the mothers thought it would be a great day to give birth. She has a spot in the barn with a good amount of space and in the morning it looked like she might give birth then. We went into town in the morning to an then arrived home around 3 p.m. and checked on her and see she had started labor and already had 6 pigs on the ground. Now this was our first time ever having a sow in labor. I had read a lot of research on what we need to watch for and we also wanted to have things happen naturally. We have a strong feeling that nature knows what to do. However, it didn't seem like things were going well because the baby pigs were not nursing and getting very cold. It seemed like the mom was not claiming them. I had mentioned before this was a new experience for us, so we were calling neighbors and friends to see what was happening. We brought baby pigs in the house to warm them up but would take them out later to try and get them to nurse. It seemed she had one more baby to give birth to and that took another 4 hours until that happened. Well to make a long story short only 1 survived and it was the last one. I think since she was able to nurse the last one that it gave her the strength. It was a long night as we tried to do everything we could to help them, but it was a harsh introduction to pigs giving birth.

After getting very little sleep we worked the next day to make a shelter that might help the second sow with her birth. We moved this building over to her area.

We then put about two inches of hay down in the building to help keep everyone warm. On Sunday the temperates were better with a high of 42F and a low of 17F but we had a strong wind which made it feel much colder. Before we moved this shed over it I knew the sow was going to have her babies very soon, because she was taking grass on the ground and trying to make some bedding. I think she was very happy we moved this over because she went in right away and didn't leave.
After filling up her house with more and more hay, we would check her often during the day and night. At about 11 p.m., she looked great and I thought it was a safe time to go to bed. The next morning I went out and checked on her and was happy to see not only the sow but 7 happy little pigs and they looked great.
As you can see her, we had very different experiences with our first litter of baby pigs. I am sure we made some mistakes, however it is nice to see that a good mother can make a huge difference. We did make the decision that we will not have a litter again in the middle of winter. Hopefully we can get some sleep in the coming week!

Welcome to our farm

I have created this blog to give updates on our little farm. http://squeakytoyfarm.com/
My wife Gretchen and I were married in June 2006 and bought a house with 10 acres two miles north of her parents place. Gretchen is a 2001 graduate of Kansas State University with a degree in animal science, Gretchen has an uncanny awareness of the animals under her charge, and seems to know whenever there are problems and just loves animals. Gretchen takes care of the animals everyday year round, I (her husband Jeff Wacker) try to help as much as I can, while I maintain the business. Together we take great PRIDE in raising happy and healthy animals!
How we got started is we bought two bred gilts and between them they had 11 pigs. Now a gilt is a pig that is having her first litter. Once she has her first litter she is then called a sow. My grandparents were hog farmers, but this has been a new experience for both Gretchen and I. We also chickens on the farm and hopefully by next summer will have turkeys along with a garden of items that we will sell at the local farmers market. Anyway, I will try to update this often so you can see what is going on with our farm. Please email me if you have any questions.