Lobbying in DC, Pig School in Virginia, New Piglets, Goat Clearing, Quicker Rotational Grazing & Fall Colors

At the farm, we’ve got two litters of new piglets, the goats are still grazing in two separate herds, the hens picked up their egg production slightly and the cattle are continuing their quicker pasture moves thanks to a persistent drought.

Off the farm, Grant got to help with our friends’ pastured pork school in Viriginia, visit a bunch of other farm friends and make a trip to D.C. to lobby for the protection of animal welfare standards.

Grant had the chance to join 200 other farms in Washington, D.C. for a rally, as well as visits to legislative staff to lobby against the EATS Act earlier this month!

EATS is short for the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression Act. The purpose of the bill is to prevent states and other local jurisdictions from regulating agricultural products produced in other states. The purported goal is to prevent a “patchwork” of state regulations and ensure a uniform national market.

The driving issue of the federal bill is state laws like California’s Proposition 12 and Massachusetts’ Question 3 that each create higher welfare standards for laying hens, breeding pigs and calves raised for veal. The EATS Act would invalidate each of these state laws and prevent other states from creating similar animal welfare standards (and could have far-reaching consequences limiting states’ rights in many other realms, for that matter!).

Of course, there are no such regulations limiting battery cages for hens or gestation crates for pigs in Louisiana and one major reason we started our farm was to raise animals outdoors in natural conditions and not confine them to crates and cages, regardless of what any laws say about animal welfare standards.

We raise animals this way because it’s better for the animals, produces a healthier product and by rotating animals outdoors, they can work in tandem with nature and actually build soil and restore healthy ecosystems versus creating manure loads that become waste stream liabilities.

We also think that raising animals this way is better for farmers’ mental health. No matter how jaded one gets, being around animals that are suffering and stressed isn’t healthy for the people around them, either.

So although the proposed legislation wouldn’t necessarily have a direct impact on our farm, when we received the invitation from the Responsible Meat Coalition to attend the rally and meet with congressional staff on a trip they funded, we were happy to join in and help. Both of us could have attended, but I had some schedule conflicts that prevented me from going.

After Grant signed up, he found out that he knew some other farmers going, including our friend and mentor, Will Harris of White Oak Pastures.

The Responsible Meat Coalition recruited all the farmers that attended from around the country. All the farms that participated follow similar practices as we do, raising cage and crate-free eggs and meat. One of the strongest lobbying forces pushing the EATS Act is Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the U.S., which has been owned by a Chinese company since 2013.

It was a really interesting and fulfilling trip for Grant and he made some connections and hopes to continue to stay involved in their work.

The week prior to the lobbying trip, Grant had a long planned visit to Virginia to see several of our farm friends and help out with the annual Farrow to Finish Pork School at J&L Green Farm.

Our friends Jordan and Laura of J&L started their farm together in 2009 and raise farrow-to-finish pastured pork, grass-finished beef and pastured poultry, including the turkeys some of you ordered last year for Thanksgiving!

They have become leaders in the regenerative agriculture circles through their online community, FarmBuilder Entrepreneurs. Grant learned a lot and then developed a friendship with Jordan after attending their Farrow to Finish Pork School in the fall of 2018. They’re definitely experts in their outdoor, rotational pig program and have one of the largest outdoor, crate-free farrowing operations in the country.

Since Grant’s first visit in 2018, we’ve visited their farm several more times and stay in touch on all the trials and travails (and triumphs) of being first-generation regenerative farmers. This year, they had a great turnout for their course and Grant went up to help set up, pick up speakers from the airport, serve food and help with farm chores and such.

This year the course also included some other real experts and leaders in our field, including Jeff Mattocks, animal nutrition expert for the Fertrell Company, and Greg Gunthorp, whose family has been raising meat using regenerative, pastured-based methods since before those methods saw the widespread resurgence we’re seeing now. Needless to say, it’s always reinvigorating to sharpen the saw and spend time with other regenerative farmers — both experts and those new to the field.

Grant managed to fit in visits with a bunch of our other Virginia friends at Polyface Farm and Whiffle Tree Farms, too!

Meanwhile during Grant’s trips, we were fast approaching fall farrowing. Our sows last had litters in April — on the 4th, 7th and the 10th. They all had big litters and the piglets grew really well. And despite pounding the feed to the sows (they go from eating about 5 pounds a day during gestation to upwards of 20 pounds a day when they’re nursing large litters), we weaned when the youngest litter was 6 weeks old and the oldest was 7 weeks.

Sometimes we try keep the piglets nursing until 8 weeks, but the sows were losing conditioning (no matter how much they eat, producing milk for 11-14 piglets requires A LOT of calories).

Just a few days after being separated from their piglets, they went in to heat, so we planned to put the boar in with them before their next heat cycle in mid June.

That made their due dates as early as October 5th. Cade and I got their stalls in the farrowing barn ready and moved the two sows that were actually showing (in their bellies and udder/teat development) into their stalls on Friday, October 3rd.

We moved to this farrowing set up last spring after completing this three-stall barn construction. These sows are the only sows to ever use the farrowing barn and it’s each of their third litters in here and their fourth litters overall.

With our sudden and heavy rainfall and sows’ tendency to sometimes dig deep nests or insist on birthing right next to another pig or generally make other bad decisions, a barn set up with a roof, an even floor and bumpers seems to be much safer for the piglets.

These two sows waited another week after we moved them in the stalls to go into labor, remarkably at the exact same time. Our staffer discovered them each with two piglets born that Friday afternoon and they finished up about the same time later that evening.

They both had smaller litters than in the spring, but given that their third litters were so large and we bred them back right away, it makes sense that they would drop fewer eggs this time.

Unfortunately, nothing is guaranteed with farrowing and this time, the spotted sow laid on a few piglets. She had the same issue last time, but with a much bigger litter and two runts that were having a hard time competing for teats, it seemed more unavoidable then and more frustrating this time with a smaller litter size to start.

I am convinced that part of the reason pigs can have such big litters is because the disparity in size between mother and piglet is so significant. In our case, I’d estimate the sows are about 600 pounds and piglets are typically between 2-3 pounds.

Yes, there are animals with a much bigger size discrepancy between mother and baby (marsupials like kangaroos plus giant pandas), but those animals have underdeveloped babies for specific reasons, typically just have one baby at a time and have ways of protecting them.

Meanwhile, a sow needs to lay down to nurse a whole litter of piglets and there’s just naturally risk in how she does that safely. Short of confining a sow to a crate where she can’t move around, which we would never do, it can be hard to avoid losses.

That doesn’t make it any easier though and I have a lot of restless nights trying to sleep the first week after piglets are born.

This time, the temperature swing from night to day might have been an issue, with piglets snuggling up to their mom for warmth at night. I am scheming to rebuild a creep area in each stall for next time, to be able to have a heat lamp for the piglets to cuddle under without risk of mom laying on them.

This has to be designed extremely well to avoid any fire risk, of course.

I have been researching when sows begin to lose their hearing and when their agility decreases. People often worry about the success for gilts (the term for female pigs until they have their first litter), but I have noticed that their awareness and agility and attentiveness often seems to be the best on the first two litters.

The only research I’ve found on hearing is related to confinement sows who are subjected to lots of barn din noise (fans and mechanical ventilation) which of course isn’t the case for our pigs.

And sometimes, it comes down to piglets’ temperaments and instincts, too. I have seen litters that seem so smart in sleeping in corners and getting out of mom’s way and this time, from one day old, several of the spotted sow’s piglets were constantly getting under her feet when it wasn’t nursing time!

All in all, I’ve been farrowing pigs for 10 years now (Grant even longer) and the mantra I’ve tried to have for myself is that nothing is guaranteed and while we can always learn something to improve, sometimes you just need to celebrate the miracle of new life!

Leading up to the sows having their litters, I was thinking about how much we’ve learned about raising pigs in our climate and soil type and how much of a joy the April piglets have been to raise. Once you get past the first few fragile days and weeks, the stress of raising pigs goes down a lot!

The April pigs are the first litters sired by our Duroc boar and although that means they don’t have sharp pointy ears like some of my favorite breeds, their chill temperament makes up for it.

We don’t do a general population pig program on our farm, rather pigs are raised and rotated with their siblings and cousins/other piglets born within a few weeks of them. They’re not combined with older or younger pigs or breeders. This allows us to dial in their feed and keep tabs on each pig and not worry about competition or bullying.

After moving out of the farrowing barn paddock, this group has had roughly weekly rotations to new sections of woods and silvopasture in three separate corners of the farm.

Right now they’re continuing to work a section that we’ve more or less never run pigs before (their dad did rotate through here in his bachelor time in the spring while their moms were having and raising them, but there’s a big difference between the impact of one pig on the land and 28 pigs!).

The first eight of them will “graduate” to harvest on November 12th. It is always bittersweet, but the sweet part is knowing without a shadow of a doubt that we gave them the best life possible in order to offer you some of the highest quality meat possible. The bitter part that comes with it is a necessary, sobering part of the raising meat. It takes life of some kind to nourish life.

The goats are still in their two separate herds — the breeders in one herd and the and the market bucks, young does and retired does in another herd.

The breeders have stayed in proximity to the barns and our acre paddock that has field fencing, so whatever crazy breeding antics that might ensue overnight, they are contained with physical field fence and not electric fence that they might become tangled in.

Accordingly, we’ve had them do some maintenance and cleanup grazing all around the barn, the driveway and the entrance to the farm and they’ve done a great job! We just have another week or so until we can pull the bucks and put the herds back together again.

After dropping their egg production kind of suddenly, the chickens bumped back up a little, which is a relief.

But we don’t expect that to last. The flock that started laying in June should hold relatively steady even with the declining daylight, but the two older flocks will likely continue to drop off as we inch towards the winter solstice. At some point some or all the flocks will likely do a fall molt, where they stop laying altogether and regrowth their feathers before winter.

Fortunately, we do have young hens waiting in the wings that hatched in mid June and could start laying as early as this week (at 18 weeks old), but will likely gradually start laying over the next month.

We do not use supplemental lights for our hens, so we are at the mercy of their natural adjustments to the length of daylight, but we do hope that our spring and summer hatches will help make up for the decline in production from the older flocks.

The cattle have continued their quicker pace of pasture rotations. We did finally get some decent rain on October 5th and 6th and while it’s always welcomed, it’s too little, too late in terms of a resurgence of warm season forages.

Those are slowly petering out and we’ll likely be finally ready to bring in 5-6 steers in for harvest in the next few weeks and restock all cuts of our own beef!

We will be keeping our big white cow, who should be bred for a March calf, as well as her calf from last year and another calf born last May that will need another year to finish, likely. We’re still torn about whether and when to buy in more steers and cows at these historically high cattle prices.

At this point, we’ll definitely have a small herd through the winter, but more goats than we’ve had in many years!

The goldenrod and swamp swallow are popping off in full force and the purple wild asters are just starting, too. Growing up in the Midwest with beautiful changing leaves, I’ve had to adjust that our fall colors here in Louisiana are really like Mardi Gras colors — deep golden yellows, purples and of course rich greens!