Why We Built a Farrowing Barn, New Litter, Goat Reunion, Finishing Cattle & Pigs, Waiting for Pullets to Lay & More!

Sows and piglets have been occupying a lot of brain space for me lately, as happens during farrowing time!

So I devoted a good portion of this to explaining how we ended up with the set up we have now for farrowing, compared to what goes on in commercial operations (and why we no longer leave the sows to their own devices to farrow “naturally” outside).

Plus another litter joined the party, we wrapped up breeding season for the goats and combined the herds back together, we’re close to finishing some beef and hogs to be processed soon and the chickens are starting to decline in egg production a bit more as we wait for the pullet flock to start laying to make up for it!

The first two litters of piglets are now past three weeks old and doing great!

An outside observer might wonder why we don’t let the sows have their litters outside “naturally,” so I thought I’d go into why, after nine years of farrowing outside, we invested in this three-stall farrowing barn last spring and are so happy to have our sows under a roof on an even floor, surrounded by bumpers to have their piglets.

Of course, pigs are certainly capable of having their litters outside with no real shelter or bumpers or fencing. After all, wild pigs do it all the time!

With feral hogs, the conversation related to their reproduction is usually that they can have large litters and have two litters a year, thus their populations can become rampant quickly. And while it’s true that it is difficult to keep destructive wild hog populations in check, the reality is that litters from feral pigs tend to be fairly small compared with domestic pigs and have a higher mortality rate before weaning.

Research indicates that wild pigs average just 3-8 piglets per litter and typically experience a 50% loss of piglets before weaning age. Of course, in the wild some factors like sow nutrition and diet and even predation are factors that are not factors for well-cared-for domesticated pigs, but interestingly and tellingly, sows accidentally crushing piglets is still a primary cause of piglet mortality in the wild.

And by comparison, wild piglet mortality is on the higher end compared to other species in the wild, such as alligators, bears, deer and raptors like hawks and owls (however for what it’s worth, coyotes, foxes, opossums and raccoons all have fairly high mortality of their young, as well).

I’ve gone into this before on other blogs, but the size discrepancy between mother sow and baby piglet is significant and the sow needs to lay down to nurse, so there’s just an inherent risk there that doesn’t exist in the same way for other animals like cows and goats and sheep.

All that is to say, the idea of letting the sows do things naturally just left to their own devices with some bedding like a hay bale… well, it sounds nice, but in reality can result in high piglet mortality.

Further, in our climate with our sudden heavy downpours and our soil type, there’s further risks. Until chatting with other farmers in similarly wet climates like Florida that have super sandy soil that drains well and tends to bounce back from pigs rooting massive wallows, I didn’t even think about how much easier that would be!

Our clay soil type means that when a sow digs a big bowl of a nest in the ground because she thinks it will be comfortable or maybe even ideal for her piglets, it is going to remain a bowl. And depending on the slope of it, newborn piglets sometimes have a hard time climbing out of the way in time when she goes to lay down in it. Then imagine we got a downpour of 4.5 inches of rain like we did last weekend and well, actually, don’t imagine it!

Of course, giving a sow an entire hay bale to nest in helps. The A-Frame hutches we used to have where piglets could hang out in the corners and the angle made it impossible for sows to crush them there were great, too.

But issues still persisted, namely with heavy rainfall and not having physical barriers between sows if they wanted to barrel into each other’s hutches during labor. Usually sows seem to respect each other’s space, but not always! They also usually respect electric fence, but hormones and instincts sometimes make them do weird things and we had issues with that happen, too.

Now we have nice big stalls (10 feet by 10 feet), with push drinkers for on demand clean water and bumpers along the sides. I’d like to try to figure out how to have a proper creep area (usually a corner with heat source of some kind to encourage piglets to sleep there instead of piled up on mom for warmth) and the great thing is that we can continue to observe and improve the set up every time.

In some of the pictures, Grant is repairing the bumpers in the empty stall before we moved the last sow in to have her litter. He got quite a lot of attention from the sow in the middle stall while doing it!

For cost purposes and for breeding livestock that need the fewest interventions to do their thing on their own, of course we’d love it if we could just leave the sows to their devices and farrow outside “naturally.” But maybe that would require a higher tolerance for piglet mortality that I simply don’t have.

While there may be some time where the sows get a little bored (like the days leading up to farrowing and before we’re quite ready to let the sows and litters out into the yard behind the barn) in terms of sow welfare, this is a far cry from what is done in commercial farrowing barns.

A lot of people have heard about farrowing crates, where sows cannot turn around and this limits sudden moves that could cause piglet crushing. To me this is bad enough as pigs are extremely intelligent and emotional animals and I can’t imagine how crazy they’d be going when confined like that.

But what fewer people might know about is that sows are also contained in gestation crates for more or less the entirety of their pregnancies! This is supposedly done to prevent aggression between sows, but anyone who raises pigs knows, if you meet their needs (which includes mental stimulation and limited/no stress), they are pretty chill. They can snipe at each other during feeding time, but even that can be limited by having high fiber supplements available free choice to help them stay full longer without offering too many calories that can cause over conditioning or piglets that are too large.

The final commercial hog barn practice that was shocking to me upon learning it, is that the sows are all dosed with with synthetic oxytocin and prostaglandin on day 114 of gestation, so that they go into labor by the next day, day 115, which is full term.

Hormones are powerful, especially if compounded by naturally occurring hormones and the risks, particularly if the sows were not confined in crates, include aggression toward piglets, as well as dystocia, uterine spasms and umbilical cord injuries. Apparently sow barns do this to somewhat control the timing and staff needs of farrowing and theoretically to decrease stillborns and speed up labor.

Anyway, after three rounds of farrowing in this set up, it really feels like the best of both worlds for us! We can honor the sow and her natural instincts to nest, but still move around and we can protect the piglets much better than we can in outdoor set ups.

And speaking of farrowing, our other sow in this group finally had her litter on Wednesday night, just shy of three weeks after the other two. I suspect she cycled early and was in heat right before we moved the boar in back in June, so then she didn’t go back into heat for three weeks after that.

Oddly, she only had four piglets this time! No stillborns and no sign of anything amiss, other than low fertility. There’s a bunch of reasons this could have happened. She had a big litter in April and high weaning rate, so her fat reserves were a little depleted, potentially. We try to really pound the feed to the sows during lactation, but sometimes they don’t eat enough.

Often a sow’s strongest heat cycle after having piglets is the first one they have after delivering, usually right around weaning. Since she cycled twice before getting bred, we may have missed that window.

There could have been other things going on like a uterine infection or something (though we have no signs of that). She also had her first litter on the young side and sometimes they can put more energy into reproduction then and catch up putting reserves into their own bodies later on.

But she’s got four chunky, healthy piglets that she’s taking very good care of, so oh well. You can never predict exactly how things will go and my mantra with farrowing is that nothing is guaranteed.

One thing that was extremely sweet to see with her was the bed of hay she made herself. We knew she was getting close to farrowing and planned to finish up the bumper repairs on Wednesday. When I went to check on her late morning on Wednesday, she had a mouth full of dried grass and was clearly beginning to make a nest!

Nesting behavior can start 12-24 hours before labor. Not all sows do it, but when they do, it’s incredible to watch them being busy little bees making their nest just so, before laying down with a big sigh to rest before labor starts.

You’ll notice in the first photo that we threw a fair amount of hay all over the stall and she was focused on eating once we moved her in. The second picture is later that afternoon when I checked on her, just laying on top of it. The hay is still everywhere. When I went back and checked her that night, she had made a perfect rectangular nest along one of the bumpers and swept up nearly every piece of hay off the ground into the nest/bed.

Since having the piglets, I’ve even thrown more hay in the rest of the stall and she’s put it where she wants it in the nest!

And unlike the spotted sow’s litter, these four are extremely smart about sleeping in the bumper and staying out of her way. And she is also being extremely aware when getting up and getting down, doing my favorite sow move of shimmying away or even pushing off the bumper to get away from the piglets before rolling over on her belly to get up. So the points she’s lost for low fertility this time are definitely made up for in being careful!

The cattle are as fat as can be on Louisiana grass! As the cooler weather and change of season moves in, though, we will finally be ready to process more beef. We’ve had a lot going on personally with trips and staff transitions and other things in the last six weeks, but we should finally be ready to schedule some processing dates for beef soon!

Until then, the herd is continuing to make fast rotations around the farm. When there’s peak pasture growth in certain seasons, we typically divide each field into three or four wedges with a central watering point at the center.

But when there’s less abundant growth, we let the cattle have the whole field as once. We will also bale graze if we need to (putting hay out while still rotating them from field to field) and supplement with alfalfa pellets, too. This allows the cattle to continue on their growth curve for proper finishing no matter how the weather or the season affects the forage quality.

After six and a half weeks apart, we put the whole herd (minus the two bucks as well as two bucklings we castrated late) back together again late last week.

The breeding madness had really stopped, so hopefully that means that all 32 proven does and 8 yearling does were bred and will kid as close together as possible.

It’s really nice to have a tight kidding window where the does are all focused on their own kids and we get the whole herd back out rotationally grazing as soon as possible, versus keeping them in a safe kidding paddock without tall grass and shrubs for kids to get lost in!

Our varsity squad all had kids in the span of five days last November which was a dream, but then the rest of the herd was all spaced out between January 31st and April 25th.

We do have doelings born in that spring window available for sale! Check out more details about them here.

The started their pasture rotations in what we call Field 1, the beginning of the circuit. We fed the goats a lot of pumpkins in the fall of 2023 there. And last year and again this year, that resulted in a big patch of volunteer bottle gourds. And of course the goats got right to work breaking open the gourds with their bottom teeth and eating the foliage, as well!

The chickens are still living their best lives, but the dropping daylight is bad news for egg production. Hens are photosensitive, so they lay best when there's at least 14 hours of daylight. 

Commercial hen houses achieve this with artificial light, but with our outdoor production model, we're at the mercy of the actual daylight and now we're at fewer than 12 hours per day and dropping.

We do have a new flock of young pullets that should start laying any day now (they just passed the 22 week mark late last week and sometimes start laying as early as 20 weeks), but those will be small eggs at first before sizing up.

This week begins our sixth season providing eggs for Grow Dat Youth Farm's CSA. Although their season starts right when the hens are dropping their production in the fall, we really enjoy working with them and believe in their mission and appreciate that earned revenue through their CSA is a great way to support their work.

We started this blog with the sows and piglets and now we’re ending with the finisher group of pigs!

Our first processing date for these guys is fast approaching on November 12th. About two weeks after that (depending on whether we can pick up right before Thanksgiving or wait until the Monday after), we will be able to restock cuts and sausages we’ve been out of like ground breakfast, chorizo and Italian sausages, Andouille, Cajun and kielbasa links, plus stew meat, tenderloin, organ meats and more.

We’re also keeping six gilts (the term for a female pig before she has her first litter) out of this group and will aim to get three of them in with our boar by November 12th, as well, aiming for March piglets. The other three we will put in with the boar in December for April piglets.

Until then, they’re romping around their big woods paddock, rooting up cogon grass, snoozing in the shade and generally living life like all pigs should.