pigpen problems

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sbwertz

sbwertz

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A news article about a pet pig loose in Santa Monica this morning reminded me of my initiation into pigpen building. When I was about 15, my mom decided to raise a feeder pig. My job was to build the pigpen.

My first attempt looked great and held the piglet for about an hour. I beefed it up, and it lasted a day. Pigs are smart and strong, and although she only weighed about 20 lbs at that point. She managed to break out.

This continued for over a month. Soon she was too big for me to carry home and I would have to grab her hind legs and "wheelbarrow" her home, squealing all the way. The neighbors found it all very amusing.

FINALLY I put a hotwire up on the inside of the pen and jacked the power up to about twice what I used for a horse. That kept her at home!

I will never forget my mom, as the slaughterhouse picked her up, bawling "Her name's Petunia." I never liked her so well as when she was freezer wrapped!
 
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My wife grew up on a small farm and always had a few farm animals as pets. A year or so after we were married her mother became tired of some of the "extra" animals on the farm. One day her mom she showed up at our door with a couple of bundles in white butcher wrap paper. One labeled "Hansel" and the other "Gretel".

Yes, those were the names of her pet goats . . .
 
When I was young, a friend and his neighbor both got piglets with the idea of raising them on table scraps. When the pigs were full grown, they had them butchered, but then discovered that they had grown attached to the animals and couldn't eat the pork.

So, the two families swapped.
 
Dan26 said:
When my wife was little she had a goose as a pet. The goose attacked her mom. The had goose for dinner that night.
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A friend's gander (who was about half grown) attacked my knees one day, and I reached down and grabbed it by the beak, shutting off it's air! When I finally let it go, it staggered away, and NEVER attacked me again!
 
Ok, here's another story - and I swear it is the absolute truth.

My father-in-law raises beef cattle, and for our wedding reception dinner, my bride's parents slaughtered a steer and roasted all the beef. It was excellent - and I was not happy that it was all gone before I could get seconds.

While everybody was eating, my wife's 14-year old sister was wandering around the tables. Whenever someone remarked on how good the roast beef was, she would say

"His name was Punky".

I kid you not,
Eric
 
I grew up on a farm also.......we raised mink. Now these are wild all their lives. There is no taming them and they fight like all hell when they have a chance.

Did we have favorites, yes.......males that were great at making babies. Females that were always taking in the kits of others. We had them fenced and caged however, like anything, things happen and they get loose. We also had duck and geese in the fenced area. They would make all kinds of noise when a mink was loose.

To say we didn't have or try to make pets out of them would be silly. Every child wants pets. However, farm children seemed to understand the way things have to be. The city children never seemed to understand. Dog and cats are pets.

People that don't grow up on the farm, miss the understanding of somethings in my opinion........this is just one of those thing.
 
One more little thing.

We ate duck like most people ate chicken. On average we butchered 200+ ducks in the fall.
We ate Goose like most people ate turkey. I never tasted turkey untill I was out of high school and in the service.

And some of our christams presents when we were growing up were either a goose or several ducks to others who didn't have them.
And most of them lived in the city.
 
stonepecker said:
One more little thing.

We ate duck like most people ate chicken. On average we butchered 200+ ducks in the fall.
We ate Goose like most people ate turkey. I never tasted turkey untill I was out of high school and in the service.

And some of our christams presents when we were growing up were either a goose or several ducks to others who didn't have them.
And most of them lived in the city.
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LOVE goose eggs! Very high fat yolks and GREAT for baking. (Also make AWESOME Easter eggs!
 
In the spring before the weather turned nice....and while the eggs would still freeze.
We would gather all the eggs every morning. The hens hadn't built any nests yet.

The cakes and pies my mother made with duck eggs were some of the best.
Many a night we would have goose eggs fried with poke chops for supper.
And one goose egg scrambled, in the morning, was equal to two duck eggs or three large chicken eggs.

The kids today don't know what they have missed.
 
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I dyed half a dozen goose eggs and took them to a 4H Easter party one year. Created quite a sensation! Made them into egg salad for lunch.
 
We have a few chickens (I know, not to exciting) but every now and then they lay one of these: 4-16-12 349.jpg
 
???? Time to send that one to a hachery and see what happens?
One year (way back when) we sent in 300 duck eggs and 2 dozen goose eggs.
We got back over 260 ducklings and 20 gosselings. That was our best haching ever.
Of course, it didn't count the eggs we let the hens sit on.

Those were the days.
 
I had 2 hogs last year. They didn't break out of the pen, they literally BROKE it down! Pig panels were bent up and on the ground.

We also had two goat bucks some time back, who would fight all the time. One of them snaped the lock off a horse stall, knocked down the gate to the inside goat pen, smashed through the plywood goat door to to the outside, ramed through a pig panel welded to a gate, and was found furiously butting the other buck. It was the most impressive thing I've ever seen a goat do!
 
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My Dad had to work with cows as a kid. As a result we only raised one or 2 over the years for meat. We raised goats for milk. Butchered about 100 chickens every year. Raised pigs for a lot of years. My Dad still has sheep. I liked raising pigs. Very smart animals. About the only thing that keeps them contained is concrete and steel. They seem to think plywood is candy, wire is an inconvenience, and rough lumber is something you destroy to pass the time. One time about 10 of the pigs got out into the feedlot for the sheep and those pigs using just there noses did more to get it back to ground level that I could've done in the same time with a front end loader. Pigs the greatest ground clearing equipment ever made.
 
Pets and pigs

All interesting stories. I also grew up on a farm. We never ate any of our pets, but coyotes got my pet lamb once. A classic picture we have somewhere, is of my grandmother down on her hands and knees petting the little pigs. These were about 70 years ago.
 
I grew up in the country but not farm. But...I did have a small farm that I owned and where we lived for 32 years. We raised about everything you could think of at one time or another. At first we had Standardbred Horses, but then our family grew from 1 kid to 6 kids from 1968 to 1971 and we had to get a little more practical.

We always had steers, sometime holstiens because we lived in dairy country, but most often, hereford-holstein cross although we also did angus and herefords. (1 and sometimes 2 were 4-H projects)

We raised hogs every year usually 3 or 4 but as many as 6. (usually 2 were a 4-H project)

We raised at least 50 roasting chickens every year.

We raised 20 Turkeys a year (as a 4-H project).

We raised 2 to 4 lambs each year (as 4-H projects)

Besides that we kept at one time or another duel purpose chickens (Rhode Island Reds or White Rocks) for eggs and meat.

We kept a couple of goats now and then.

We had a milch cow for about 12 years

We raised rabbits once or twice.

We had ducks once but something (Probably a fox or loose dog) got them.

We raised "easter egg" chickens that laid blue or green eggs.

We also had exotic chickens (Polands I think) that were really just for looks.

We also had two sows that we bred. One had 7 piglets and raised all of them...one of them had a great litter 12 beautiful piglets, but she lay on 9 of them over the first week so we only got 3 - one was a champion at the 4-H expo that year and another was 3rd Place. The last one we ate.

We had a riding horse because one of my daughters was a horse lover.

Our kids always knew, the dogs were pets (we always had a couple of them) the cats (which were not allowed in the house) lived on our property as long as they wanted but were not ours. The farm animals were going to end up as meat on the table, either our table or someone elses, but meat on the table never-the-less.

Needless to say our kids always had chores to do, which was a good thing, it kept them out of trouble.
 
TellicoTurning said:
These stories remind me of why I don't allow my wife to keep farm animals for pets... any thing she names, I can't eat.
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If she wants to name a farm animal give her a milch cow, lots of farmers name them. We had two different ones, and when we got rid of them we did not eat them. They both were good enough milkers that they went to a dairy barn.
 
This last year, we went in on half a cow. Some friends of ours have a friend who raises beef cattle. The rancher advised us to not name the cow. My wife told him that I had already come up with a name: Yummy. Now when we have a roast, I'll ask my wife "Is this just beef or Yummy beef?" :biggrin:
 
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