New gilts

These girls have been in the works since late last summer. One of our farmers market customers mentioned that the farmer they bought pork from was getting out of pigs. I asked if he had breeding stock to sell, since we were looking to cull our Chester Whites. (Here’s the backstory on that saga.) He didn’t but hooked us up with this really wonderful pig guy, Marlan Braet, and we arranged to buy some gilts bred to farrow in the spring.

Last Sunday it was finally time to go and pick them up. We met Marlan in Lowden, and then trekked all the way over the (Mississippi) river and through the woods into Illinois. Marlan had actually sold his breeding herd to another farmer, who was nice enough to sell us our pick of his bred gilts.

Here’s what we came home with, 3 (predominantly) Hamp gilts bred to Duroc:

You can see that our new pullets formed a welcoming committee!

They’re really nice handling pigs! As you can see, they warmed right up to Matt.

It was a long day, but I’m very hopeful it was worth the trip. The farm these girls came from was very similar to ours – it wasn’t a confinement setup and they were not at all pampered 🙂 And they’re just so calm and easy to work with.

Marlan is a guy that knows pigs, and pork, and obviously had put a lot of work into developing this herd. Here’s a great article about him [PDF] from Iowa Edible River Valley magazine. He was such an interesting guy to spend the afternoon with!

We should be farrowing in just a couple of weeks. Hopefully I’ll have good results to report then!

4 years ago:

You have GOT to be kidding me