Rest In Peace

They say every livestock farmer eventually has a loss or losses. I've been very lucky so far, having never lost anything bigger than a chicken. Even losing Frances the hen was pretty hard on our family.
But the school of hard knocks has been in session around here lately, replete with what must be a nun bearing a yardstick. Let me explain.
About a month ago, I noticed one of my beloved Berk piggies started limping. They were outside in the piggie palace, and they liked to sleep in a big pile so I figured maybe she got stepped on by another pig, or twisted something during one of their frequent racing matches. The next day, another one was limping a bit, too. Well, that was strange. The next day, a third was limping. This sent me to the internet, the phone, and email, wondering what on earth was going on.
Long story short, I got lots of different opinions, lots of differing thoughts on what to do. The vet said here, try this. I gave the three pigs a dose of medicine, but it didn't seem to make much difference. Things seemed to level off, and though a few of them continued to have a bit of a gimp, they otherwise seemed totally normal. Then about a week ago, my favorite pig Tiny just went down. Her hind legs stopped working. We brought her bowls of milk mixed with probiotics, mineral and vitamin supplements, and aspirin for any pain and inflammation. She drank it down readily. We kept this up for days, and she seemed otherwise totally normal, with a very good appetite, normal pee and poop, and she had no temperature. Another call to the vet. We tried a couple different antibiotics on her which made no change.

She was in a group of pigs that are just days away from their date with the butcher. I knew if she was down like this, they wouldn't accept her at the butcher (nor would I even think of trying to force an animal in this kind of condition off of a trailer and into a slaughter facility). I knew if she didn't have some kind of miraculous recovery, I would have to put her down myself. I dreaded it. I've shot animals for humane reasons before, even a big boar once. But this was my little Tiny One, she was special to me. As the littlest in the group of Berk weaners we got last Spring, Tiny stood apart from the rest. She had a very broad white splash on her face, and her ears were especially large, giving her a cute, clownish appearance. Her personality was totally endearing. Being the smallest, she knew she couldn't win any push and shove battles, so she would occupy herself doing other things while her mates were squabbling over anything (food, water, the best spot, you name it, pigs are very competitive). When the rush was over, she would quietly yet confidently walk up and get her share. But perhaps the best thing about Tiny was how she knew me and recognized me at a distance. Every day as I approached their pen or paddock, Tiny was always the first to see me coming off in the distance, and she would literally come flying toward me, giant ears flapping, smile on her face. I would call out to her, and once inside with them, Tiny would insist on a good rub. She would press her side against my legs and grunt happily. She loved a good scratching and rub behind the ears, but rubbing her belly literally made her go weak in the knees. As I rubbed her tummy, she would collapse onto her side, usually on top of my feet, grunting her approval, encouraging me to rub more and more. I could hear her saying "Oh, yeah, that's it right there...." She would have liked it if I never stopped. This, I'm sure is the reason for her very gleeful greetings.

Tiny also had a way of spinning and tossing her head under a water shower that made me sing Tina Turners' song Tiny Dancer to her when I was hosing the pigs down. She won a space in all our hearts. Karen often asked if we could keep her as a pet.
So the thought of having to shoot my little Tiny Dancer made me sick, and I kept putting the thought out of my mind. I did know, though, that I would have to do it at some point.

The bigger problem of course, was that I have been vexed by what this strange lameness thing really was. Was it a bug, a feed deficiency, something on our farm? Most importantly, what can I do to prevent this from ever happening to another pig (if indeed, it's possible). So I had decided that I would have a necropsy (animal autopsy) done on Tiny in order to get some answers.

Yesterday, after doing chores with the new smaller pigs, I went to the Berk's pens with a bowl of treats from the garden. I saw Tiny lying up against the fence. When I called to her, she didn't move. I knew she was gone. Dear, sweet Tiny had spared me having to kill her. So it's been a mixture of sadness at her loss, and gratitude that I didn't have to do the deed.

Tonight the vet came out, looked over the pigs, and did the necropsy on Tiny. Though we won't have the results of the samples for while, the vet is pretty certain this was something called mycoplasma arthritis. Having read up on this as one of the possibilities, and talking with the vet about it, I was reassured a bit, and of course a bit concerned, too. Good news is this not something that affects meat quality at all, it doesn't exist in the environment so it won't necessarily be a problem for us forever. He said pigs get it from direct contact with pigs that already carry it. I won't necessarily ever see it again. If a sow has had it and recovered, she can pass immunity on to her offspring, though there is no vaccine for it at this point. Symptomatic pigs can be treated with antibiotics that target the joints. We don't just give antibiotics lightly here, but neither will I withold medicine from an animal that needs it for health and humane reasons. Our ultimate goal is to avoid the need for them in the first place.

The other good news is that everything else on Tiny looked very good. Her liver was perfect with no blemishes, and no signs of any parasites.
So tonight as I head to bed, I am very sad to have lost a sweet pig, but I'm also very grateful that at the same time she helped me figure this dilemma out.

Thank you, Tiny. I will always remember you.

Partly sunny, 79
Moved the cows and pigs last night, into adjacent paddocks. I've been surprised to note that though I planted the Dwarf Essex Rape mostly for the pigs, they have mostly ignored it. Instead, the cows have gone crazy for it. In fact, at first after I got the cows, they went straight for the stuff and I had a hard time keeping them off of it before it was tall enough to graze. Now I am letting them have at it, and they love it.



The garden is really producing lots right now, especially melons (all at once, of course!) and tomatoes. Karen has been busy as a beaver working in the kitchen and garden, trying to get stuff put up. with all the rain, some of our melons are bursting while they are still on the vine. Sad for us, great for the pigs!

79 Degrees, breezy
The weather today is such a welcome relief. All creatures on Prairie Fire Farm appreciate a warm, not hot and breezy day.

I wanted to mention another issue happening here on the farm. Our bats seem to be dying in large numbers, and we have no idea what is the cause. We haven't sprayed anything, nor changed anything except put up some hay in the barn. Like every good old structure, we have had a resident population of bats here. We welcome them for the bug eating service they perform!

But this year, starting back in about June, we started running across dead bats on the ground. The first bat or two, we didn't think too much of it. Then we started noticing that we were finding as many as 3 or 4 in a week. One near the garage, several under an ash tree, one in the barn, more just in different places on the lawn. Many of these dead bats were really dried out, which seemed odd. Dessicated like they had been dead a long time, but we are pretty sure we found them within 24-48 hours since we regularly walk by, etc.

We have made calls to our local bat conserve folks and the DNR, but haven't heard much back that is at all helpful. DNR suggested in a letter it may be heat related, but I am a little skeptical of that. It always gets hot in Wisconsin in summer, and if it were the heat, wouldn't everyone be seeing these bats dying everywhere? I am very in touch with local bat calls, so I have a very good idea about whether this is going on in other places. I know of one other place - a house in Madison - that is seeing extraordianary die-off. Karen has been corresponding with the DNR, and we would love to help out with becoming part of a monitoring program.

The world's bats perform such a very vital function on our planet. Imagine the devastation caused by a million-fold increase in the number of insect pests. More pesticide use, which poisons more insect-eating animals causing a horrible destructive spiral is one very ominous and obvious result. Here is a link to a short article outlining a crisis in bat health across the country:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/60482932.html

This issue has us very concerned. This is real, and it is a wake-up call that the scales of nature are getting really unbalanced.

Here is a link to a local bat conservation group, they have LOTS of great info on their website about how to set up bat houses, what to do with bats in the house, identification of bats, etc.

www.batcow.org

Dog Days of Summer

Hot, Humid, 90 degrees 68% humidity.

The weather and mosquitoes are taking top billing at any place a few locals are chatting. We have been enduring a very long, very warm spell. Looking back, I see it's been quite hot around here since at least June. Many years when we get real lots of heat, we are also dry, but not this year. In step with the last several years, this year has been much wetter than normal. Beginning to wonder if 'normal' will ever happen again. I have noticed many days lately that we are hotter than San Antonio. We have been getting hit with monsoon-like rains. Between severe rains, we get less severe rains, but almost every single week this Summer, it has rained at least twice. As of about three weeks ago, we were 7 inches above normal for the year, and we have gotten plenty more since then. So all this moisture means we are inundated with mosquitoes as well. They are crazy thick this year. Karen and I have actually had to retreat back into the house on several occasions, despite mosquito blocker clothing and full on DEET. I don't remember ever hoping for an early frost so much! It also means the lawn is acting like it's on steroids. I simply can not keep up with the growth of the lawn this Summer. Seriously, it could use a cutting at least three times a week. Even if I had the time to mow three times a week, we are lucky to find one afternoon when the grass dries adequately to be cut. I'm telling you my grass is growing at a rate of at least a half inch a day!! Insanity.

There is a silver lining to this, however. This great grass growing weather also is great for growing pasture! Honestly, I need more cattle to keep up. The 8 calves and the pigs I have should have been about right for a normal year. But in these conditions, I believe I could stock at least double that amount right now and be just fine. Of course, the trick is being able to predict the future. Since I have no idea when or if the water works might shut down, it's hard to justify getting more cattle at this point in the year. We have maybe two more months of growing left, not enough time to put enough weight on a stocker calf to make it worth it.

We took the biggest three Berks to the processor a couple of weeks ago, so now we are down to 5. We had brought them back up to Piggie Palace for when we were on vacation (much simpler and more secure for non-swineherding farm sitters!)and then we let them enjoy the shade there for the worst of the heat. We did move them back out on to pasture last week. They are managing the heat just fine out there. Of course we provide them with plenty of water both for drinking and wallowing. There have been a few days when I have spied their armor of wet mud, and I tell you, it does look almost invitingly cool and mosquito proof! Four of the remaining 5 have an appointment to be finished in September. This time, we are keeping one back for breeding! We've been planning on taking the big leap from buying our feeder pigs to farrowing/raising our own litters. We will start with 2 or 3 gilts (females that have not yet had a litter). A female pig can have two litters a year. It takes approximately 6 months from birth to finish a feeder pig @ 250 lbs. You never know how many piglets your gilt will have, but we are hoping for an average of 8 weaned per litter.

SO....doing the math.....that means that if we get three gilts bred in October, they will farrow in three months, three weeks, and three days (February). If we get 8 from each litter, that's 24 piglets. Common advice says we may lose a few along the way. So we hope to have maybe 20(?) pigs to finish exactly one year from now. of course, our numbers may be way off, one never knows how many live pigs they will have. I spoke to my Berk guy today and even though he is more experienced than I will ever be, he had a sow have 10 pigs last night, but only 5 were born alive. Stuff happens. I know that sort of thing is going to be pretty hard for both Karen and I, and frankly it's been a deterrent to taking the breeding leap. But our pork business is growing, we'd like to have more control of our genetics, and it really is time. So we'll just have to learn to be good midwives. Good thing Karen is one of the best there is ;)

We planned to buy all the gilts at once from the Berk man. But one of this current batch of pigs is just a really nice looking gilt. Big Girl, as her name implies, has shown herself to be made of great swine stock. To my untrained eye, she looked pretty good - long, rectangular, good shoulders and hams, good underline. Then we had a swine consultant come out to help us figure out how to expand our pork business, and she really liked these Berks, and confirmed my opinion of Big Girl. Now, our pig farmer has a couple litter mates to Big Girl saved, as well as some other nice gilts from other litters to choose from in September. So it feels good that I'm going to be using one gilt that I raised myself, and it will be neat to see how she looks compared to her sisters. I've arranged to go down with the trailer in September and pick out the basis of our breeding stock, and bring them home to give them a chance to all get to work out pecking order, etc. before they get bred.

Our consultant recommended that we get a boar simply because it is easier to get the girls bred. But we feel like it doesn't quite make financial sense to buy, keep and feed a boar for only 2 or 3 gilts. So we are going to try our hand at AI. Stay tuned!

In the meantime before our future piglets are ready, we will be short on pigs! Our Berk guy doesn't have any feeder pigs available now, so we will be getting a batch of crossbred pigs from our original pig man. He happened to call just as we were wondering where we were going to get more piggies. We know his pigs are healthy and good growers. These pigs should finish around the first part of December.

I don't know if I've mentioned this in here before, but a long-term goal of ours has been to put up a hoop barn for the pigs. A hoop barn can be deep-bedded, Swedish style for comfort and well-being of the pigs year-round. I don't know if we'll need it year round, but we definitely will love it during Spring, Winter, and Fall... I'm also hoping to be able to use one end of it for parking my tractor out of the snow. We are hoping to get this project underway soon, and we hope to have a hoop barn up before the snow flies. I have done as much reading up on these types of barns as a person can do, I needed to talk to some real folks who have used them. In the last two days, I have talked to three different farmers in my county with them, and it was very encouraging. They all love their hoops, and would build another. All of their hoops have stood for over ten years, and have held under our 100" snowfall years recently, so I'm convinced they are a good investment.
To the right is an example of a hoop barn.

Hot and Muggy, 83 degrees
Things continue to move at warp speed around here. So much going on, it's hard to find the time to sitdown and write about it. Seems like I barely get to come in the door at 9:30 pm after doing chores and projects and it's time to go to bed so I can get up and do more the next day!
Last weekend,for Solstice, Birk got to visit with her aunt Shoshana while Karen and I got a little grownup time in with dear friends at their place up north. The weather cooperated, the pontoon boats did NOT break down(!) and Coach and I won at Freestyle Bocci Ball. 'Nuff said about that! Dottie enjoyed swimming in the lake where Mich taught her to swim! Here she is retrieving a swimming 'noodle' Thanks to our farmhand and friend Jason for watching over the place so we could get away for a weekend.

The pigs are doing very well. They did as they were told, and they rooted up the sparse, dry southeast corner of our pasture really well. I moved them off of there, and then I planted forage turnips, or rape. Planted it last Thursday, and it was coming up just great by Monday. Looks like that old Deere drill I got will do the trick pretty okay. Though I do need to adjust it better to try and get it down to only 10 lbs per acre, it dropped about twice that in the space I planted. I'll need to tinker with it more, but honestly, I'm pretty proud of taking a 50 year old piece of fairly complicated machinery (lots of gears, grease fittings, springs, coils, and cups, etc) and making it work. I could easily have spent ten times what I spent on this grain drill. So a few extra seeds in the ground are an acceptable margin for experimentation. Besides, these turnips are going to be grazed by livestock, not harvested by machine or anything. Their mere presence on my sandy hillside is good for the soil. I disced the hill to smooth it out after the pigs and to incorporate their manure, then planted.
However, they continue to really root up some very nice, beautiful soils and pasture. It's not very cost effective or rational to allow them to continue to turn lush alfalfa and clover into mud. There are two alternatives: take them off the pasture, or put rings in their noses. I think the rings are inhumane, I know the pigs don't like them. It makes it painful for the pig to root with it's snout. There is nothing more natural and instinctive to a pig than to root, and to turn that in to a source of pain for the animal seems very cruel to me. I have a very nice alternative for them, the piggie palace, so that is where they are headed during the next pasture rotation. Eventually, we will build a hoop barn for them.
And now, for the big farm news of the week! First though, I'll give a bit of background. In a previous post,I mentioned how we had over 300 bales of hay made from our pasture. Those are now safely stored in the mow of the barn. I don't have any cattle yet to eat the hay, and I'm thinking this hay will be for pigs and possibly one or two larger cows if we get some later in they ear. But the rain hasbeen generous to us this Summer,and my pasture is now again nearly waist high in most places. I'd rather get some feeder cattle in here to graze the alfalfa down, accomplishing two things - avoiding making hay(and the expense of that),and adding value to the standing alfalfa by turing it into beef on the hoof. If I buy cattle now, and graze them on all that hay,they should gain nicely andI'll have heavier calves to sell in the Fall.
I still may decide to make hay out of some of the pasture, but this way I have alternatives. So, that being said, I'm very delighted to say that I am back in the cattle business! I found some calves on Craigslist, and they were dropped off the day we got back from vacation. They are nice, healthy looking calves, most are about6months old. They are a mix of dairy breeds, mostly steers. Dairy breeds are plentiful in Wisconsin, that's for sure, and they sure make for a colorful herd, don't they? That little Jersey steer is simply precious. Almost makes ya wanna bring him in the house and make a pet out of him!



Ain't they cute???
I can't tell you how sweet it was to hear a little 'moo' and smell cows in my field again. It's just so good. And already they've provided us with a little 'entertainment'! Last night(their first night here) we had a big thunderstorm, including of course lots of thunder and lightning. I went out this morning to check on them, and couldn't see them. Not anywhere. Knowing from past experience that even large cows have an amazing knackfor "disappearing' in plain sight,such as in a very slight valley, etc., I didn't panic as I walked through our pasture. But finally, I had to concede that though I had checked nearly every where in our little pasture, they were GONE. I went in to the house to ask Karen to come out and help me look inside our fences one last time before I started to actually freak out. In my everyday job, the times I get called out to help locate or corral loose livestock is always under two circumstances:either they just got moved,or a bad storm panicked them and they stampeeded. And I had both happen at once. Oh, boy. We went toward the one corner I hadn't thoroughly inspected, and sure enough, as we approached, we saw some ears twitching behind the brush pile. There they were! Wheew! I now know that if last night didn'trun them off, they are here to stay. That makes me sleep good at night.

Pigs Can Be Rotated

Overcast, 85 and muggy
Finally have a few minutes to write again. I wish I had pictures to go with these last few posts, but the danged digital is broke again. Sigh.
Last weekend I got the pigs moved to the next spot in the pasture. It is essentially about an acre away from where they were, down in the southeast corner. I wanted to move them there next, since that is our most sparse ground at the moment. Since it's not growing much forage, I want to try planting some forage turnips there. This is a big deal for me, as this will actually be the very first time I've ever actually tilled ground or planted anything - like a real farmer! LOL The turnips are a good choice for pigs. They grow very well during the slump in summer growth of other pasture grasses and clovers, and they are an excellent source of nutrition, next to alfalfa. The pigs will be allowed to graze the tops of the turnips, which will grow back if allowed a break from being grazed. Cattle can eat them as well.
So the pigs are out there now, helping to prepare the soil. And I must say,they are doing a fine job of it. Eating the weeds: I watched them tonight as they were really seeking out a common pasture 'weed', White Campion. They carefully sought out each stem of the plant, then they dug below it with their snouts and pulled out the taproots and munched them up. I'm guessing there are some good minerals or carbs in those roots. Or both. I am also really pleased with the distribution of manure in this paddock. Pigs tend to designate a bathroom area,and are known to often concentrate their dunging in a specific area. But they are not doing that on this paddock,the manure is pretty well evenly distributed out there. I think this is because I have moved their furniture three times now (shelter, feeder,and waterer) within the week. This keeps their rooting at a shallow level, and distributed in different spots (again,to bring up rocks,loosen the soil in preparation for planting). This ill make it easier on the tractor when I am ready to work the soil with the disc and then plant.
I have been told that it is hard to move pigs compared to cattle. Pigs like their home base, and want to go back to it. Plus,they dont like to cross a line where there had been electric. They can't see well,but they remember, and are hesitant to test it.
Since this is my first time actually trying to rotate pigs on pasture, I came up with my own ideas and thought I'd try them even if other guys said it didn't work very well.
First, I created their shelter and waterer as one unit,and made it mobile. I bought a heavy duty flat wagon, which is big enough to serve as their shelter and shade. It is more than adequate for the warm months. I put a 500 gallon water tank on top of it. This will be the resevoir I fill their drinker from. All I have to do to move them is to hook the tractor up to the wagon, put their feeder in the tractor bucket, and go.
So last week was my first trial run, and I knew it would be agood test. I was not just moving the whole herd of pigs to an adjacent area, I wanted to take them half way across our pasture,i nto a whole new world as far as they were concerned!
I got everything ready to move, and I removed the existing electric fence netting that had been holding them in. Note: turn fence offf irst!
The next thing was to simply start out fort he next paddock (which I had already put up, ofcourse, except for the section I wouldd rive in through. Like I said, pigs don't want to cross electric lines. Neither do cows or farmers,for that matter.) Making sure there were no pigs in the path of the tractor or the wagon wheels,I creeped outof there in low gear, calling the pigs. I slowly ventured out into the big open space of the Back Four, still calling them. Next Note: this is where it really, really pays to have tame, handled pigs! The pigs thought this was one of the best things ever! They followed right along behind the wagon,which remember,is their shelter. So me and 6 little black and white piggies slowly made our way throught he clover field. Two pigs stayed back for a while, worried about crossing the line. But finally, even they mustered upt he courage and came running to catch up with their herd. I steered into their new paddock, and set up the wagon, unhitching it from the tractor. The pigs had taken a bit of a detour and were sampling forages along the way. No bigdeal, I expected that. It gave me time to get everything set up in their new space for them. I drove the tractor out,and then I pulled out the treats - a whole case of organic milk and buttermilk from the co-op! I filled their treat bowls, called them once, and they came stampeding in. While they sipped their delicious dairy treat, I simply closed off the open gate, and the pigs were now moved into a whole new paddock. It took less than 20 minutes. Like I said, since they have been in this particualr paddock,I have moved the wagon within it 3 times,to get them used to being moved,and to keep their digging shallow and distributed vs. deep and in one place. So far so good.
I've been working on the half-century-old grain drill I got about a month ago. Cleaning it, greasing it,replacing feed tubes, fixing it up in anticipation of using it to plant the turnip seeds. I hope it does what it's supposed to. As I was scraping away a ton of grime and trying to locating grease fittings, I remembered the other peice of old John Deere machinery I owned at one time. It was a manure spreader,bought at auction. That thing was a consternation, always breaking down, and I hoped this drill would not also bring me frustration. Oh well, I didn't pay more for it than the scrap price,so if it's a bust I can always drag it to the scrap yard.
The hayfield is growing back really well as we've been getting rain and sunshine both. Our barn mow is pretty full, so I want to get some cattle to put out there and harvest the forage before it gets out of hand. It will be easier to let some cows eat the grass,and add value to the grass through them, then sell them in the fall when the pasture is done, and hopefully make a few bucks at it. Plus they will fertilize while they eat. A lot easier and more entertaining than filling the barn with hay!
Someday we'll have a proper beef herd, but for now, I need some ruminant mouths, and I'm not going to be too picky. Stay tuned!

Hay and Air Lock

Rainy and cool, 72
To update on the first cutting of hay, it did get rained on the next day. We didn't get as much rain as some neighbors, though. In all, we got three big bale wagons full of hay off of our 5 acres, over 300 bales. Karen, Jason and I had the job of unloading all those bales and stacking them in the barn mow. It took us two evenings, but now the barn is so full of hay I need to add some supports under the joists! Some of them have started cracking under the weight.

We sure have been busy these days. It's hard to remember everything that has gone on. A few days ago I finally got around to fixing a little problem on my tractor, and wound up with a much bigger problem. The gasket on one of my fuel filters was a little twisted, so a small fuel leak had developed there. So I finally got around to fixing that. Took it off, set the gasket, replaced the filter, and the tractor refused to run. Somehow I had managed to introduce air into the fuel line. Must not have bled the vent properly when I was done. I monkeyed around with the tractor several times over days. I cracked the injector lines open while I cranked the engine, no change. I removed the fuel supply line to check for crud in the line, it poured out in a stong stream, mostly on my boot. I dropped not one, but two tools into the bucket full of spent fuel I had below the filters to catch draining fuel,and had to fish them out. I spent a lot of time covered in diesel. Diesel is oily and slippery. I dropped one of the glass sediment bowls and cracked it. My last gasp effort was to finally try replacing both fuel filters with new ones, and of course replace the broken sediment bowl. If that didn't work, I'd have to call in reinforcements. I finally got to replace the filters the other night as the sun went down. It was quite dark when I finished, so I re-opened the fuel line from the gas tank, and let her fill up. I let it sit at least 24 hours to ensure maximum fuel re-fill. And that did the trick! I sure was happy today when I got her to start up and run smooth for a good 5 minutes. Success!