Dipping this condensed milk out of the barrels always leaves me with a really sticky bucket. I used to take them over to the hose and scrub and rinse them off, often with a whole audience of pigs, when it occured to me that the pigs would probably love nothing better than to lick all of the milk off the bucket. So now what I do when I'm done filling the trough is toss the bucket into the pigpen. By the next morning it's clean and dry -- a quick rinse and it's good to go. Here big momma, one of my older sows, is volunteering for bucket duty.
I've been looking for an easy way to feed this milk to the pigs, and finally found that plastic sheep troughs are a pretty good way to go. They hold about 50 gallons and are low enough that the smaller pigs can get the food out of them without too much trouble.
For a pig, there appears to be something pretty satisfying about being able to stand in your food. Maybe it's pig perfume -- these pigs will all come out with a little bit of eu de dairy behind their ears (and on their noses, and faces, and legs and...) but that's what they like, and I'm happy that they like the food.
You can't see it in these still photos, but they're eating it like a dog would eat peanut butter -- big chewing motions. Yummy!!
Some of the humus on the ground gets mixed into the dairy now and then. That makes their diet 90% forage, right?
Posts
5 comments:
mathass
Kevin never did define the terms of the challenge he'd accept, did he?
I don't see why he'd pass up an easy $10,000.
So are your pigs growing any muscle on the condensed milk? Are they just getting fat from it?
mathass
I see Walter's snowed in now.
How do the pigs get 90% of their diet from forage in winter? Is there even any greenery under that snow? Do his pigs grow at all during the snowy months?
Honestly, enough with the 90% forage BS already. It's a darn shame too, b/c you have a great blog but you're annoying as heck with your whining.
I don't have a scale on the farm to weigh the pigs -- it's on my list of things to build into a new corral -- so I can't say whether they're putting on weight. Past that, I can't say whether the weight that they might put on is lean or fat, but I suspect given the huge calories of the condensed milk that it'll be mostly fat.
Fat is ok right now. It's been 15-20 degrees at the farm, and I suspect that a fair number of the calories has gone to keeping the pigs warm.
Made me laugh about the pigs standing in their food! I agree! What is up with that? Why do they insist on doing this? I suppose it is positioning to protect their spot. LOL
Post a Comment