Welcome to our Piggies

We are gradually adding to our little homestead and are actually getting to the point where we can not add many more animals where we are living now.
While my last year I was able to get some beautiful Anglo Nubian Goats for my birthday and absolutely love them, some of the children have wanted to have pigs for ever so long.

Vellvin has always wanted a pet pig and take it for walks around town.

While I don't think she will be walking around town with these pigs I think we will walk them around the property.  

Naming our animals is always a fun task and this time as often we had already decided on a name for our boar. Years ago we watched Frontier House and they had a pig called JoJo Pumpkin. The children always said if we got a pig we would call it that. Beatrix Potter is a loved author in our home and her  Pigwig from The Tale of Pigling Bland is also a favourite.

Rogan has been chief researcher and he and I had a difference of opinion on the breed of pig we were going to get.

While we both agreed we wanted to have heritage breed pigs I wanted Gloucester Old Spots and he wanted Large Blacks.

We did compromise on this with Rogan winning me over with the fact that the Large Black is protected somewhat from sunburn due to it's skin colour. However one day I would like to get a Gloucester Old Spot 😍

What we have found with having any sort of livestock, whether it be poultry, rabbits or goats is that it's often  the housing of the animal that adds up in the setting up costs.

This time we decided to try and source pallets that are often around for free as our fencing materials.

We incorporated the fencing into the sty for the pigs and so eliminated the need for extra materials.

We didn't (Rogan and I) even try to 'square it out' much to Stephen's disgust but 'eyed it in' as we put the two separate but adjoining pens together.
We will add another one next to it when we have piglets to fatten up and sell.

We used the pallets and just ran star pickets down the center and have a crude gate system of opening and closing.
Now I know people say that pigs will get out easily but we are hoping that the 'docileness' of this breed will keep them in for now.
One day when we have our own homestead we will free range them a bit more but till then they will have to be content with a daily walk .

Blessings to you and your homes,