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I had a new litter of pigs born last week. It’s always exciting to have some new little ones running around the farm. The last couple of weeks prior to delivery were nerve wracking. I calculated the due date wrong, so I spent about ten days expecting the litter at any moment. That’s what I get for using my memory and my fingers to calculate the due date instead of actually looking at the calendar. I even wound up being surprised when the litter did come because I looked at the calendar, then did the math wrong. Sometimes you can’t win for losing.

New litters are always a little sad for me. I don’t use farrowing crates for my sows. The good part of that is that the sow is free to get up, move around, and otherwise live her life in the way a pig should. The bad part is that I always lose a couple of pigs that could be saved by the crate. It is frustrating, but it’s the choice I have made.

At any rate, the litter is fine now. The sow (a first-time mother) has figured out how to be careful laying down, and the piglets have figured out how to stay clear. They are full of vigor now; they dash from place to place instead of just walking. Baby Tamworth pigs tend to be very reactive, so there is always a sprint to safety whenever I approach the piglets. This bunch is inquisitive, too. Once they figure out that I’m not going to bother them, the little pigs will come up and check out my boots if I stand still.

It is enjoyable to watch the sow and piglets move around the pasture. They make a little parade, with mama up front and the little ones trailing along after her. The sow is much tamer than the babies. Since I bring feed to her every day, she is always ready to come up and greet me. The sow approaches and the babies follow (at least, to a point).

The sex ratio on this litter is weird. I have four boars (boys) and only two gilts. I’m not sure how that worked out. It does make it a lot easier to decide which gilts to keep, though. I only have to pick one of two instead of one from five or six. I don’t have to pick any of the boars. They will all be sold, either as boars or as pork.

August in Texas…what a month. Spring was rainy, and the early summer was cool by Texas standards. Now it’s August. It is hitting 100 most every afternoon. The awful heat affects everything on the farm, whether animal, plant, or farmer. Right now, I structure my days to avoid the heat and hang on until cooler weather comes.

The late winter and spring were much wetter than usual. I made a beautiful crop of annual forages, mostly sudangrass and pearl millet. We watched a King Kong movie and joked about how the sudangrass field might be hiding a giant monster ape. The cows got twice the grazing time out of the annuals as I expected. I entered August with the Bermuda grass knee-deep in places. I will be able to keep the cows on the Bermuda until at least the beginning of September. By that time, I hope the sudangrass will have regrown. It is not growing back at the same rate it grew at first, but it is growing. I could use some rain to perk it up.

Garden plants have the same pattern as the forages. Things grew like crazy early, the corn got eight or nine feet tall, and the pumpkins ran vines all over the place. Some of the pumpkin vines had leaves that poked up waist-high, which is impressive for a vine growing along the ground. Everything was thick and lush and green. Then came August. The corn is turning brown, and the pumpkin vines are dying back. The sweet potatoes wilt every afternoon.

The only plant that is doing well in the heat is the okra. The problem with that is….okra. I like okra best when it’s fried so long that it no longer tastes like okra. Extra crispy fried okra is good, but I can’t eat fried food at every meal. Why did I plant the stuff? My wife and two of my sons like pickled okra. The bad news is that they like store-bought pickled okra. My home-made pickles aren’t cutting it for them. But, hey, at least something is growing in the heat.

My pasture grass is not growing in the heat. The Bermuda is still green in the places where it got so tall. I can see that the part closest to the ground is no longer green. That means the roots are going dormant. Once the cows have harvested the tops, the Bermuda won’t grow any more this year. I also have a lot of acres still ungrazed covered with old-world bluestem (OWB). The OWB has faded fast in the last few weeks. OWB hates hot, dry weather. It will green up if we get some rain, though. The bluestem is what I will use as forage later in the fall when the Bermuda and the annuals are all eaten up. The forage quality is low, but it will fill bellies.

The animals are faring a little better. The cows lay up in the shade during the hottest parts of the day. If I go out in the afternoon, I can always find them under the trees in their pasture. In some fields, they have another option as well: going amphibious. Here is a photo of one of the cows cooling off. My stock ponds are not sparkling clear swimming pools, but they do the trick for a hot cow.

The pigs are following the same pattern as the cows. They have a shady barn to rest in during the day. I make sure to wet down the barn floor every couple of days so they can get a little more cooling as well. The soil on my place is not much better than sand, so it is hard to make a good hog wallow. It won’t hold water for any length of time in this heat. Wetting it down gives the pigs some relief, and they will be able to make it through. At least I don’t have to worry about how to keep my upcoming litter of piglets warm. August will take care of that for me.

Schedules also change during this heat. The cows graze morning and evening. The pigs only come out at night right now. I am working the same hours. My garden is in two sections. One section has morning shade, and the other has evening shade. I can usually work in the shady patch, and I try my best to avoid working in the extreme heat of the afternoons. I also watch myself for signs of heat stress. The first one for me is always a feeling of exertion. When doing an easy job like walking fence starts to make me get out of breath, I know it’s time to go inside. A refreshing drink and some air conditioning are the best things to recover and cool off. That’s the pattern for August. The only real break that we might get this month is a hurricane. I know those awful storms are hard on folks who live on the coast, and I don’t wish them ill. For me, hurricanes bring rain, clouds, and a break from the heat.

My favorite activity in the August heat is dreaming about the fall. I will start overseeding pastures with cool-season crops sometime in September. I need to get my seeds ordered and ready to go. I will try to time the planting to coincide with significant rain. In good years, the rain brings the cool-season plants up and going in mid-September, then extra rain to carries the farm through to the spring. Some years we don’t get it, and the seeds wait. The worst year there we got just enough rain in September to bring up the plants. The rain stopped and the mercury hit 100 for about a week in October. The little plants burned up, and I wound up spending money on hay for the winter anyway.

A poet said that April is the cruelest month, but that’s not true in Texas. April brings bluebonnets and rain and San Jacinto Day. August is the cruelest month in Texas with monotonous heat and no rainfall.

I was expecting a litter of pigs a couple of weeks ago, but nope. One of the tough parts of farming is that sometimes you don’t know if an effort has failed for weeks or months (in this case, three months, three weeks, and three days). I’m evaluating when I want to have another litter. I have interest from a 4-H member in buying some pigs for stock shows in the spring of 2020. To make that work, there is a fairly small window for the pigs to be born. Had I gotten a litter in October, I would be right on track for the show pigs. As it is, I either need to hold off on breeding for a few months or give up on the show pigs. I’m also looking for some feeder pigs…that would make up for this missed litter, and keep me from needing to rush into a new litter.

 

One of the perils of free-ranging hogs in Texas is unwanted porcine visitors. In a state with somewhere between one and four million wild hogs, it’s inevitable that they’ll want to provide company to my bunch sooner or later.

We’ve had a sounder running around the neighborhood since the spring. The first time I saw them, half hidden in tall grass, I thought it was a bunch of puppies. They were only about eight inches tall, all black, with long tails wagging. At first, I couldn’t figure out why someone had dumped a bunch of lab puppies in my yard. Then I wondered why the puppies all seemed to have their noses buried in the dirt. Then I realized I was looking at about a dozen little feral pigs.

They showed up here and there through the summer. Each time I saw them, the pigs were bigger, but fewer. We went into the fall with just four, but they were pretty big, as wild pigs go. They mostly stayed along a creek across the street road from my pigs, and they weren’t much more than a curiosity to me. (Except for what they did to my sweet corn, but that’s a different issue)

Then it happened.

I went out to check my pigs, made a quick count, and realized I had an unwanted guest. There was a feral boar that was visiting my young gilts. He was quite enamored with my girls, and paid me no attention. I made short work of him. Sadly, he was inedible….mature boars are so loaded with hormones that their meat is awful. His BO was overpowering even from eight or ten feet away. Problem solved.

Or not….there were three feral pigs hanging out the next day, including another boar. A neighbor took the two sows the next week, leaving just the single boar. I kept trying to get rid of him for the next few days, and he kept one step ahead of me. I finally caught up to him, though, and I’m back down to just my domestic pigs. I suspect that I’ll have one more reminder of the wild pigs in February, though……

My pigs are purebred Tamworths. Tams are a rare breed, listed as “watch” by The Livestock Conservancy. Watch status is given to somewhat rare breeds that have between 1,000 and  2,500 individuals registered annually, and a total population of less than 10,000 worldwide. Tams are holding on, but they aren’t really a part of the modern pork industry.

The breed originated in Ireland as a land-race, or a native breed that just sort of evolved to fit the local conditions. In 1812, the local Irish pigs impressed Sir Robert Peel (future Prime Minister of Great Britain), who had them imported to his estate in England. He called them “Irish Graziers” and was struck by their ability to grow on pasture rather than richer feed. He imported some of the Irish pigs to his estate near Tamworth, England, and crossed them with the local pigs. The resulting pigs were long, lean, and did very well rustling their own grub.

Up until about 1950, pig breeds were classified as “bacon hogs” or “lard hogs.” Most remaining breeds in America started as lard hogs….pigs bred to get very big and very fat in a very big hurry. When lard was both a key cooking ingredient and a vital industrial lubricant, fat pigs were very desirable. Lard hogs were created to turn corn into grease as quickly as possible. Bacon pigs were bred differently, mainly to make bacon (duh) as cheaply as possible. Bacon breeds tend to be long, slower growing, and produce lots of babies.

The only remaining bacon breeds in America are the Yorkshire, which has been bred to emphasize babies over bacon, and the Tamworth. I love Tams because they excel at getting out into a pasture and rustle their own grub. Compared to other breeds I have had, Tamworths will eat about 50% less purchased feed and make up the difference by finding good stuff in the pasture. They remain pretty true to type, and haven’t changed a great deal in the last century.

The fact that Tamworths haven’t changed a lot from the range pigs of the 19th century also means that they are still bacon pigs…long, slow growing, and producers of the finest bacon I have ever had.

And isn’t great bacon one of the most important reasons to pick a pig breed?

I have four spring piglets that are now hundred pound hogs. In a couple of months they will be ready for the freezer. Three are spoken for, but the fourth is available….I’ll sell either half or all if anyone is interested.

Hit me up at info@texasnaturalpork.com if you are interested.

You can reach me at info@texasnaturalpork.com

“Shoot” isn’t exactly what I said, but this is a family blog.

Besides the pigs, I have six heifers that I wanted to get bred this summer. I went through a round of hormone therapy to synchronize the breeding season, I brought in an artificial technician to breed them to a fancy, important, high-powered bull. I ran them through the chute and drew blood to see how well my efforts succeeded.

0-for-6. Zero of my six heifers bred on the first artificial service. Running the numbers, I could have bought a bull for what I spent on AI….and he would have had a higher success rate with almost zero effort on my part.

Shoot.