Week Four: Rogue Chicken
An average day: Our work day starts at 7:30 a.m. and ends anywhere between 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. There's a white dry-erase board hanging in the barn where all the chores are listed. The chores are typically either garden (weeding, spreading compost, seeding, watering, etc.) or animal (feeding, tending to medical needs, moving to a new pasture, etc.) or farm maintenance (fence mending, mowing, coop fixing, etc.) Someone is assigned to "the rounds" (feeding all the animals) and everyone else works off the white board. Dinner is at 6:30 p.m.; everyone has an assigned night to cook, mine is Monday. Post-dinner chores can range anywhere from closing a chicken coop (quick) to moving a pregnant pig into a shelter so she doesn't give birth somewhere crazy, like the pig wallow (more elaborate). This week we moved pregnant pigs and sleeping chickens, closed coops, fed runt piglets, and had to convince a dog to jump over an electric fence into the next pasture (the fence had of course been turned OFF).
Tuesday morning one of our momma pigs had a litter of fifteen adorable, squirmy, little piglets. By that afternoon she had squashed and killed nine (I'm sure I've already mentioned how tragically common this is). The females pigs are split into two different pastures with one male in each. Lucky guy. A pig's gestation is three months, three weeks and three days. With the cool weather approaching our breeding season is coming to an end. This is to avoid having a litter born in the middle of January and waking up to find a bunch of dead frozen piglets. Their due dates are listed on the calendar next to the chore list. It's hard to know exactly when a pig is due unless you know what day they bred. Part of my job as an intern is to keep a look out for pigs breeding, note which female, and mark it on the calendar. There is a universal ear notching system we use to tell our pigs apart; to read the notches you have to be pretty close to the pig. So, in order to know exactly which sow is getting mounted I have to get close enough to read her ear number.... or take a picture - both are as awkward as they sound.
All that sexy pig talk is in the past though because this week we separated the boars from their ladies. There are three boars, all in separate pastures now but all sharing a fence line - like a triangle. I was told to 1. watch out for depressed pigs. Pigs are social animals and they might get sad in the pasture all alone. And 2. be extra careful because the boars might be more aggressive than usual once they realize there are no girls and they have to look at a dude through the fence. The first few days they all rammed the fence and foamed at the mouth. Luckily none of that was aimed at me - they like me, I have the food.
Wednesday there were more rabbits to butcher. The boys (I'm the only girl intern) took this chore along with castrating another round of piglets. They didn't make me participate but they trained me on all the steps in rabbit butchering. It wasn't nearly as gross as I was expecting - it felt a bit like anatomy class. Next time, I'm told, it's my turn.
Like most farms, we hatch out our chicks in an incubator - it's just more organized and efficient than having the hens do it. One of our Americana hens jumped the fence, lived in the brush, and hatched out her own chicks. What a badass mom. I mentioned to Will, one of the farm owners, how much I loved this Americana mom and then later mentioned that Andy and I wanted chickens. When I went to Baltimore on my days off he sent me with the rogue mom and her three super cute fuzz ball chicks. The backyard has never been more adorable.
Tuesday morning one of our momma pigs had a litter of fifteen adorable, squirmy, little piglets. By that afternoon she had squashed and killed nine (I'm sure I've already mentioned how tragically common this is). The females pigs are split into two different pastures with one male in each. Lucky guy. A pig's gestation is three months, three weeks and three days. With the cool weather approaching our breeding season is coming to an end. This is to avoid having a litter born in the middle of January and waking up to find a bunch of dead frozen piglets. Their due dates are listed on the calendar next to the chore list. It's hard to know exactly when a pig is due unless you know what day they bred. Part of my job as an intern is to keep a look out for pigs breeding, note which female, and mark it on the calendar. There is a universal ear notching system we use to tell our pigs apart; to read the notches you have to be pretty close to the pig. So, in order to know exactly which sow is getting mounted I have to get close enough to read her ear number.... or take a picture - both are as awkward as they sound.
All that sexy pig talk is in the past though because this week we separated the boars from their ladies. There are three boars, all in separate pastures now but all sharing a fence line - like a triangle. I was told to 1. watch out for depressed pigs. Pigs are social animals and they might get sad in the pasture all alone. And 2. be extra careful because the boars might be more aggressive than usual once they realize there are no girls and they have to look at a dude through the fence. The first few days they all rammed the fence and foamed at the mouth. Luckily none of that was aimed at me - they like me, I have the food.
Wednesday there were more rabbits to butcher. The boys (I'm the only girl intern) took this chore along with castrating another round of piglets. They didn't make me participate but they trained me on all the steps in rabbit butchering. It wasn't nearly as gross as I was expecting - it felt a bit like anatomy class. Next time, I'm told, it's my turn.
Like most farms, we hatch out our chicks in an incubator - it's just more organized and efficient than having the hens do it. One of our Americana hens jumped the fence, lived in the brush, and hatched out her own chicks. What a badass mom. I mentioned to Will, one of the farm owners, how much I loved this Americana mom and then later mentioned that Andy and I wanted chickens. When I went to Baltimore on my days off he sent me with the rogue mom and her three super cute fuzz ball chicks. The backyard has never been more adorable.
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