So we have these pigs. Yeah. I got them as a breeding pair, figuring the resulting piglets will pay for our feed for the next year, and we can keep 2 for our own purposes. I don’t see myself getting too attached to these pigs, however, which is probably a good thing in the homesteading world. They’re not people pigs, even though I visit them at least 2x a day, and still run from me, while simultaneously trying to get more food out of me. We have about a billion (okay really about 15) pecan trees, and of course had a huge bumper crop this year. Really, we have to have around 200lbs of pecans, and I like pecans but not that much, and I’m not sure they’re saleable in a retail market, so I’ve been feeding them to the pigs. I sold some, but the amount we get per pound isn’t that much compared to the impact they can have on our feed costs for the pigs, so this little piggy is getting some nuts for dinner. The male has started to root around and under the barn, so I had to put cinder blocks in his rooting spot, and thus has not endeared them any more to me. They will eventually go into a 4 acre plot of land at the back of our property, especially when they start breeding, but for now they’re confined to a stall in the barn until that plot is fenced in.
I got my lonely maran chick some friends, in the form of 2 4-week old blue copper marans and 5 (I’m hoping) black copper maran day-old chicks. The day olds are either blue copper or black copper marans. My lonely cuckoo maran pullet is definitely happier, so hopefully by spring we will have some nice dark eggs to use!
Maat van Uitert is a backyard chicken and sustainable living expert. She is also the author of Chickens: Naturally Raising A Sustainable Flock, which was a best seller in it’s Amazon category. Maat has been featured on NBC, CBS, AOL Finance, Community Chickens, the Huffington Post, Chickens magazine, Backyard Poultry, and Countryside Magazine. She lives on her farm in Southeast Missouri with her husband, two children, and about a million chickens and ducks. You can follow Maat on Facebook here and Instagram here.
