We had 5 litters of baby pigs that needed to graduate up and away from mommy. Our sows did another amazing job at raising a fine group of babies, but it was time to wean.
Weaning pigs is not hard, it just takes time, patience,and planning. With that I need to recruit help. It was a family affair this time. We had to relocate sows to new pens, move some pigs out of our nursery to make room and then put the newly weaned babies in.
I purchased some seeds 2 years ago to store in case we may need them. I purchased buckwheat, red winter wheat, and hull-less oats. I have had them in the refrigerator, I put the package that they were shipped in right in the bottom drawer and forgot about them.
I was thinking that I needed to check the viability of the seed and to try to produce more seed to store. After I harvested our potatoes, I planted a small test plot of each seed. After the 2 years of storage, we have a very good germination rate and each plot is growing nicely.
The buckwheat is about to bloom, and the wheat and oats are leafing out nicely. I have never grown these to produce seed before, so this is a project of trial and error. I will write updates along the way.
Our suspicions were correct, we had a raccoon problem. In fact, at least 2 raccoon were plundering our animals. Unfortunately for them my farm protection duty was successful and we are back to being secure.
We have still been securing everything at night just in case. We lock up the chickens and secure their food. We feed the cats and dogs earlier to make sure that there is little to no food left in bowls for overnight. And we are keeping a close eye for any more signs of new activity.
In total I believe our thieves made off with 6 of our roosters while we were on vacation, 4 hens out of the coop, and one of our free range ducks. The only thing we can do now is fire up the incubator, hatch date is Oct. 5.
