Winter Pigs and Spring Preparations at Sugar River Farm

Reader Contribution by Kristen Kilfoyle
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Hi everyone! With it being almost a third of the way through April, we in New Hampshire are finally expecting our first days in the 60-degree range. This is all very exciting, especially since we received about two inches of snow three days ago. Go figure.

Last we spoke, I had written about Overwintering Pigs in the Northeast. It’s been a few weeks since the pigs went to market. They were somewhat lighter than we had hoped, but it was a bitterly cold winter and I think more calories were spent keeping warm than they were building bacon. All in all, raising the winter pigs was a successful venture. They didn’t escape (yay), and we were able to stay on top of keeping the electric fence ahead of the snow and their water melted.

One thing that went very well was getting the pigs loaded in the trailer to go to the slaughterhouse. Pigs can be pretty vocal when they are displeased, and Dan and I really didn’t want to go through the experience of herding a bunch of hollering pigs into a trailer at 5am, which we all know would definitely endear us to our neighbors. We also wanted the pigs to have as low stress of an experience as time would allow. Our pigs paddock was about 50 yards from our driveway, so the plan was to set up an alley using electric fencing leading from their current living quarters to the trailer a few days prior to their being moved. Our hope was that they would eat and sleep in the trailer, thus making the trailer fun and not frightening. I understand that other farmers may need to use their trailers more than once a week and this type of adjustment period may not be an option, but it works well for us. After a few hours of sniffing around, the pigs took to the trailer, mostly because of the food that was sitting inside, and they spent the next few days doing exactly what we had hoped. Instead of a chaotic pig move, Dan simply went out very early the day of and quietly shut the trailer door on the ten sleeping pigs. When we left, we threw them some treats from the day old baked goods section of our local supermarket and we were all on our merry way. It was strange the next few days to not have the pigs around, but it was nice to have a little break. I’ve been trying to focus on finding some good breeders in our area to supply us with piglets until we are set up to farrow our own.

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