Happy (and sad) day

[Mitra]

Early this summer I realized that my "Tamworth plans" had to be revised. Due to financial circumstances, my plans to breed Sophie and Charlotte and take them through another winter were in jeopardy. When I bought them from Jessika a year ago, my plans were to get them bred and have my own litters of Tamworths here at my farm and and raise and sell Tamworth feeder pigs. A lot of money later.......I have these two maginficent gilts, no babies to even think about until spring 2009 and not enough money to properly care for these girls and the other 100 animals here. I decided with a heavy heavy heart that I needed to find a home for one of the girls. My daughter is so attached to both of them but her pig is Sophie so I decided that I would find the home for Charlotte (my pig).
Thanks to an angel here, Janet (2ndchance), I found the most perfect home for Charlotte. Janet knew that the farmers at Flying Pond Farm, an organic farm only 12 miles from me, were very interested in a Tamworth pig. Once she heard I was trying to find a home for Charlotte, she let them know. It took us about three months to make it happen but it happened yesterday. Charlotte moved to Flying Pond Farm and as pig moving goes, it couldn't have been much slicker or easier. My girls and I cried after we drove away. She's a really sweet pig and I hope she gives them years of good red pig times and lots of babies. I feel better knowing I can visit her too! Charlotte hit the pig lottery. They built her a beautiful moveable shed in the pasture and painted it barn red (the pig and shed match beautifully ;D) She'll have more forage than she knows what to do with. I can feel her slimming down as I type this......
My SIL Marcia, brought her nice horse trailer here on Friday and we parked it by the pig's area so they could check it out and get used to it. The plan was to move Charlotte on Sunday.
Charlotte, the more suspicious of the two, refused to go up the ramp to even check out the trailer. Sophie meanwhile thought it was great fun to thunder up and down the ramp and inspect every nook and crannie of it. She even slept in the trailer overnight. Charlotte was not gonna do it.
Here are some pictures of the gals, my DD, my DH and the trailer on Saturday. Janet and Carole came over Saturday to bring clabber for their pig Porky. Janet loves these red pigs!

They are BIG



DD Roshan and Charlotte in the foreground




Can you see Janet waving from the back of the trailer?


And DH max next to Sophie


Charlotte on the right. This is later in the day and she's saying, "I'm NOT going".



Late on Sunday, I got her to walk onto the trailer. She was hungry and I had milk . We called SIL Marcia to come hook up her trailer for the drive. She arrived 45 minutes later, hooked it up and off we went. Charlotte needed a little coaxing to come off the trailer but it took all of 5 minutes before she was unloaded and eating apples and corn and investigating her new digs, the 5-star hotel of pig digs.

I will miss her a lot. I don't think Sophie will miss her very much but I am alittle worried that she's going to be lonely. My next trick is to introduce Sophie to Helen

[Liz]

I can't believe how BIG the tams have gotten!!
Having Roshan next to them really makes a good size comparison. T
hey are beautiful, healthy girls, and you have done a great job with them Mitra! I am glad you'll get to visit her if you like and she may have piglets you get to cross breed with in the future.
Sounds like everything worked out, even if it is a sad choice to have to make.
Thanks for the pics and the story, you have the gift like Joann!

[campfarmerangie]

Mitra,
Those are some MAGNIFICENT pigs. Just beautiful and so healthy looking. It sounds like Charlotte went to the perfect home. As hard as those decisions are to make sometimes, you have peace of mind about her good, new home and a little less stress in your life. Whew!
Thanks for sharing!
Angie

[Kim in VA]

I am amazed at how much they have grown. Hard decision but looks like she will be happy in her new home!

Kim in VA

[Deleted]

Here are a couple photos of Charlotte in her new home:





I gather you really want leguminous pasture for pigs rather than grass, but I guess she's getting good value out of it anyway, because she hasn't been as enthusiastic about her food as I expected. She took a break in the middle of her cracked-corn-and-whey yesterday morning to go root around, and then the summer squash got ignored for a good 20 minutes. She will always come right over for apples, of course.

--Josh

[Tammy]

Charlotte looks very happy and what a wonderful place to live. I am happy that she found a good home and that she is close to you and your family, Mitra, so that you can visit!

Tammy

[hazelsmilker]

It's a Red Pig Palace! With a grand looking gilt inhabiting it! What a wonderful home for Charlotte. I'm sure that you miss her though.

Mina

[Mitra]

Isn't she lovely?! Thanks for all the nice comments about the red beauties.

Thanks Josh for posting these pics of her. I shed tears of joy to see her looking so happy. I will continue to need photographic evidence of her settling in and her adventures at Flying Pond Farm. Charlotte is such a good girl.

Will she live in her red palace through the winter? She would be just fine in it as long as you have a way to get into the field to get to her with food and water.

[Tricia]

Holy smokes those are some gorgeous and not very small pigs! I am still thinking of them as those cute little red things, my they have grown!
So nice to find Charlotte her own kingdom and so close by!

[Deleted]

Sept 25, 2008 11:59:39 GMT -5 Mitra said:

Will she live in her red palace through the winter? She would be just fine in it as long as you have a way to get into the field to get to her with food and water.

Yeah, we'll keep her there for the winter. We'll throw a bunch of hay in there, and I need to add some hinged flaps to close the vents in the back. I'll be curious to see how cold it gets before she decides to sleep inside. She hangs out in there when it's raining, or to get out of the sun, but has a nice comfy Charlotte-shaped hole outside where she usually spends the night.

She's settling in nicely. Her shoulder is almost all better; she's only favoring that leg slightly today. Her appetite is back up and she has really started getting serious about digging the place up.

Aster (our younger Jersey) doesn't like Charlotte at all. I got sloppy with the fencing, and she slipped out and was standing next to Charlotte's fence bellowing. Fortunately Charlotte was sensible and completely ignored her...

[Janene]

Mitra-
They both look great. They have grown alot!!
It is wonderful that you found a "working" home for her--someone who is going to use her to raise more babies. Great choice!!
Nice photos....and story.
(I'm waving back to Janet!) grin!!
Janene

[Mitra]

Yes they HAVE grown! Here they are a year ago.



How cute is that? That's Charlotte on the left and Sophie on the right.

Josh - what a small world. Last week on Friday, a couple came to our place to have a tour and see about getting milk and chicken. The husband was telling me that he drives through Vienna every morning on his way to work. He said, "This week I nearly hit a brown cow on my way to work. I was driving at 5:00 a.m. and it was still very dark. I noticed something in the road ahead of me and I slowed way down. It was a cow and her rear end was in the road while she grazed on the side."

I'm quite sure that was Aster! She probably views Charlotte as some sort of competition. Glad to hear Charlotte is taking the high road when it comes to Aster's insults

Thanks also for the update on her shoulder/leg. It sounds like she's healing from whatever that was.

[catherine]

Hey Mitra...bittersweet times, I know. Sorry to see the dynamic duo broken up, but glad Charlotte has such a nice new home. I gather you are going to go ahead with your plans to breed Sophie for a spring litter? What a wonderful set up you have with Janet right there, and now another breeder just 12 miles from you. Does Janet have a boar? Wow, what a sweet deal that might be!

Just out of curiosity, how old are Charlotte and Sophie, and about how much do you think they weigh? They have grown into strikingly lovely pigs. How have you made their paddocks? With electric netting, or with woven wire? How much do Tamworths seem to root? How would you compare them with your freezer pigs as far as growth, hardiness, personality, feed consumption, rooting, etc. Also, have you ever eaten Tamworth and whatever your feeder pigs are, and if so, how would you compare their meat?

I noticed on another thread that you were considering putting Sophie in the barn with Helen. That might be nice for both of them, and they might be able to share body heat in there, as well. Also, you could tend both of them while you were in one place, which could be handy, after having seen the kind of snows you get up there in Maine! Just be sure Sophie doesn't figure out how to nurse off of Helen! lol.

I know that I'm a bit appalled by the sheer numbers of piglets that we could end up with from two breeding sows! We'd planned to butcher one of our previous two gilts and breed the other. If they are still wandering with the local wild hog herd, they should be having their litters in the next month or so. Sigh...sure wish they were still here. As it is, we should have Gus, our one nutted boar, ready to be butchered come January or February...provided he doesn't reek of boar taint as he's still intact. Wouldn't that just beat all if he did???

The current gilts should be breeding age about the time Gus goes to freezer camp. We're currently working on the new digs for the boys, so we can seperate them before the gilts possibly begin to cycle. I'll be sorry to seperate them, as they make a nice little pig family, but I don't want the girls bred too young. After they are of age, we plan to keep them together all the time...a la Walter Jeffries.

I'm so glad to hear that you will be able to keep at least one gilt. I know how much we missed our pig girls when they were gone, and are happy to have pigs back on the farm again, just 3 months later. It's just amazing how much personality they pack, and how useful they are for turning marginal food products into delicious pork! Blessings, C.

[Mitra]

Sept 29, 2008 21:32:43 GMT -5 catherine said:

Just out of curiosity, how old are Charlotte and Sophie, and about how much do you think they weigh? They have grown into strikingly lovely pigs. How have you made their paddocks? With electric netting, or with woven wire? How much do Tamworths seem to root? How would you compare them with your freezer pigs as far as growth, hardiness, personality, feed consumption, rooting, etc. Also, have you ever eaten Tamworth and whatever your feeder pigs are, and if so, how would you compare their meat?

Sophie and Charlotte are now 13 months old and I'm guessing (never taped them) that they weigh close to 350lbs each. I would love it if some of the pig experts gave their opinion based on the photos. I'm basing it on a mental size comparison with pigs we sent to the butcher and these girls are way bigger than the 200-250lb pigs we've raised.

The perimeter of their area is fenced with woven field wire attached to t-posts and wooden posts. On the inside there is a single strand of electric at about snout level. We haven't always had it electrified though. When we originally fenced it, we stapled (those big U-shaped staples) the bottom of the field wire to tree length logs and railroad ties on the outside of the fence. This worked well for a couple of other sets of pigs but the third set, figured out how to left whole sections of fence up by working together as a team (the ring leader was a gilt named Junie Beast). That's when we added the electric fence to the inside and haven't had any issues since. The times that the pigs went walkabout this winter was when their fences were buried in snows and they just walked over them. Also, no electric.

When I asked Jessika the same question about how much Tamworths rooted she said with a sly twinkle in her eye,"Tamworths are very "busy"". I had only had Yorkshire and Yorkshire crosses before and I thought they did a good amount of rooting and foraging. Nothing in comparison to these girls! Now I know what she meant by "busy" We joke that they are digging their way back to England or possibly China. The craters and trenches are really quite impressive.

Personality - hands down, the Tamworths have it. They have such smarts and you can just see it in their eyes! They figure things out very quickly. All my freezer pigs have been friendly and personable too but perhaps because these gals received soooo much attention for so long, they seem smarter and friendlier than any pigs we've ever had.

I've only raised the Yorkshires through Fall so these gals were my first attempt at wintering over pigs in Maine. They did beautifully and all they had was a three sided shed and lots of hay. They got pretty hairy over the winter too.

The only Tamworth pork that I've eaten was ribs and sausage I bought from Jessika at Maine's annual organic fair, called the Common Ground Fair. I met her there three years ago! The Tamworth pork was absolutely sublime. It's part of what inspired me to want to do this.

The pork we've raised from the Yorkshires has been pretty incredible as well. Maybe not as lean as the Tamworth pork. Until I have my own Tamworth pork in the freezer (next fall if everything goes as planned) I can't say with any authority how "different" they are. I know they both taste superb and I'm sure that is affected as much by how they're raised as their breeds.

I have a fresh ham (12lbs) in the oven roasting right now! It is a beautiful sight to behold and will be even better to eat. It will be roasting in a 200 degree oven all day today. It is from last year's Yorkshire pigs. That's all we have left from the two pigs last year, a couple of roasts and 1 cured ham. Can't wait to have Tamworth pork roasts in the freezer.

[lisanh]

If you want to bring your girl to visit with my Albus Dumbleboar next summer, let me know. We did that for two seasons with my sows -- they visited Harry in Troy for breeding in exchange for a gilt from the litter. It worked out really well. We now have the two sows and three gilts and an unrelated boar of our own.

Albus is really sweet and cute. Well, they all are, but he's quite the character.

www.flickr.com/photos/lisanh/sets/72157604436230576/

[kellyj]

Hi Mitra,
Just wondered how Sophie's intro to Helen has gone? Is Helen the solo bovine now? Are they penned together or do they share a fence? I still haven't decided what to do with Rhino.
KellyJ

[marty]

The cute little pigs I saw earlier in this folder are now bigger than Roshan was at that time! Huge! I'm not sure I'll read through this entire file to see what happens to Sophie....