What?! No Piglets?

Seems like we learn something new with each new litter.

Miss Pinky Pie went through her pregnancy just fine. She created her nest, her water broke, labor began... but she had NO piglets!
Not even days later.
Not even dead ones.
There was a slight brownish discharge at one point, but that was all. She acted like she was all done with the whole thing, and a week later she came back into heat.

Weirdest thing we'd ever been through. What the heck had happened??

At first it seemed like it might have been caused by Porcine Parvo Virus, but thank goodness it wasn't that! The symptoms didn't quite fit for this common disease. Most piggeries worldwide, large and small, have exposure to Porcine Parvo - think of it like chicken pox (before we all got so freaked out by this common childhood virus) : you get it, you're done and most likely have lifetime immunity. If she had contracted this disease for the first time right after she was bred, either impregnation wouldn't have happened, or there would have been dead piglets at various stages of development. So, not Parvo - what then?

One telling clue was that her milk never did come in, so something hormonal must have been off. Once we started looking into various causes of false pregnancy in pigs, it became clear that the length of her cycle being a week longer than normal was another clue.

That's when things started lining up that it was "F2 Toxin Fungal Poisoning" that caused her to lose the litter in vitro. This F2 toxin is actually Zearalenone which is produced by Fusarium Graminearum, a fungus which is commonly found on grains worldwide: wheat, barley, rice, corn, etc, as well as soybeans. Again, this fungus is one of those things that's just out there, worldwide, all the time.

Normally, the presence of Fusarium isn't going to be too much of a problem. It's unavoidable, anyway. But when we ferment our grains overnight (to break down the phytic acid and thus make more of the nutrition available), it allows the fungus to proliferate which of course increases the amount of Zearalenone toxin.

Zearalenone toxin acts as a megadose of estrogen. (In fact, it is used in the treatment of breast cancer and hormone replacement therapies in humans.) Which explains Miss Pinky Pie's symptoms: longer cycles, false pregnancy to term but with no piglets and no milk production. It's interesting to note that, since we've been feeding this same mix to Mr Red, our young uncut male, it explains his lack of libido, so much so that he doesn't even notice when the sow in the next pen is in heat!

Using Korean Natural Farming inputs (IMO4, LAB, and OHN) during fermentation seems to have some kind of counter-balancing effect, either by introducing enough good bacteria that it overpowers the harmful Fusarium... or perhaps the good stuff actually breaks down the Zearalenone. Without expensive laboratory testing, we cannot know for sure just what is happening, but it sure seems to do the trick. We will definitely be adding these inputs every single time in future.

We had planned on keeping a couple of the gilts from this litter to continue our breeding program and the bloodlines we'd been working on since beginning our piggery... but alas, no piglets means the end of an era for us.

Mr Red was raised to fill our freezer. Now Miss Pinky Pie will join him. (This was her second chance; remember When Mama Sow Rejects Her Piglets? She's just been too hard to work with.) So, we'll get a bit of a break while we reconfigure the pens and prepare to start over with new wean-offs. Oh yes, we will begin again!

Stay tuned - we're not done yet!

Front Page!

A couple weeks ago we had a couple visitors to the farm who write for the Big Island Weekly, a local newspaper. They took lots of notes and a few photos... and well, here is the resulting article:
http://bigislandweekly.com/sections/news/big-island-green.html-26

Nice, huh? We even made the cover, or rather our chickens did! The other woman mentioned in the article is a fellow longtime Natural Farmer in the area. We got some of our first sugarcane and bananas from them. If you are on-island, I encourage you to take Jackie's classes (mentioned in the article) - you will learn a lot and have some real hands-on experience to take back to your own farm or garden.

It's always nice to be noticed for the good we do, and even nicer that Natural Farming is catching on in a big way on the Big Island!

Feed Crops & What we Feed Our Pigs

Not much to report for September. I was injured in a car crash so not a lot extra got done around the farm besides the daily animal chores. But everything kept growing during all that time, of course!

Now things are beginning to happen again. Lots more clearing out the jungle that had regrown out back, to make room for extending the rows in our "protein field" : moringa, mulberry, and cassava. The leaves of each of these plants are very high in balanced amino acids, thus making them excellent feed crops. We have more sugarcane ready to plant, too.

Big Mama & Spot are both pregnant and due soon. Big Mama's next litter is due at the end of this month, just in time for Halloween. Spot is due mid-November.

The six young ones from Spot's previous litter weigh between 120-125 pounds each. They now occupy two of the pens, as seen in the second photo below, with three pigs in each pen. These will be butchered sometime in December when they reach 180 pounds.

We are in the process of putting up bird netting over all the open spaces of the piggery. Those greedy wild doves and pigeons are eating far more than we can afford to lose!

There have been several farm tours coming through these past months. In the photo above, Mike is telling a group of college students about the sugarcane, cassava, and mulberries we use for part of the pigs' diet. The pigs are also currently getting moringa leaves (dried; they don't seem to like it fresh - too spicy, maybe) mixed with their organic non-gmo feed, fermented together with IMO4, and small amounts of OHN (Oriental Herbal Nutrient), LAB (Lactic Acid Bacteria), FAA (Fish Amino Acid), & FPJ (Fermented Plant Juice). These last are added along with a bit of water to nicely moisten the whole mixture. It gets covered loosely with a paper feed sack, and then ferments for 12 hours. Sometimes the piggies get eggs, kabocha, or guava as an extra treat since we have a lot of these right now. And of course, they get lots of scratches, pets, and attention.

(PS: We can hardly wait until the 'ulu and papaya (seen in the first photos of this entry) begin to produce in abundance. Should be soon! And when that happens, the pigs will be getting a share of those crops as well.)

Book Review!

 

Word is starting to spread about the farm book. Yay! We took a boxful to the local Natural Farm meeting last month, and online orders have been trickling in. And of course, folks who come to our farm for the tour have been snapping them up!

Sonia Martinez, Big Island food writer and blogger, wrote a great review of my book for Hawai'i Homegrown Food Network.

Go ahead and take a moment to read the book review here!

It's Here!

August 8, 2013:  I added an ordering link to the bottom of this post for those of you on mobile devices. Thanks for letting me know, and huge thanks to those who have ordered my book already!

The farm book, Hubbell's Hog Heaven & Liz's Happy Hens: A Farm Tour, is finally here, all printed and bound and ready to go!

The back cover:

And the Table of Contents:

A link to the first review.
And here's what others have said about the book:

"It's all about their farm, the tours and how they chose to farm the Korean Natural Way...no flies, no odor!... The book is not just for farmers and it should be interesting even to people who don't farm!" ~ Sonia

"Healthy bacon!" ~ Noel

"Super informative yet easy to read, and translatable to wherever you live and whatever you want to grow/raise." ~ Lori

"Speaking as a former pig farmer, the system in the book is so practical and worthwhile to do. You can retro fit or use it as a starting point either way...it works." ~ Galyn

There's a link to order on the sidebar of this page. You have options: You can order from Amazon OR directly from me. If you order your copy directly from me, I will split the shipping costs with you (for only $2.50) AND you will get it autographed. How can you resist? 
  
EDITED TO ADD: Many have mentioned that they cannot see the sidebar from their mobile devices, so I'm adding a link here in the text for you.
You can order the book directly from me, here. 
Thank you so much!

Spotted Piglets

Our Spot had an easy time with her third litter.  Originally there were 15 in this batch, but they soon thinned out to 10... but these 10 are all doing really well.  And they are SO cute with their many variations on the spotted pig theme!

All of these piglets are spoken for, though they still have a while to go before they will be weaned.  They're growing fast though!

Meanwhile, Big Mama has been bred again using the same boar semen as Spot's last litter above, so we are hoping to see more colorful piglets come December.  And the last two piglets from her recent litter are being grown to luau size for somebody's wedding celebration, so the piggery is pretty full at the moment!

Bringing in the Feed

One of our main farming goals here in Hog Heaven is to provide the best feed for our animals. Our own farm is producing more and more, but at this point, there's not enough to keep up with two mama sows, their litters, the few piglets we keep to raise up for meat, and a flock of 70+ chickens. We are still supplementing with stuff from the feed store, and still planting more and more feedcrops all the time, to take up the slack. Eventually, we hope to be able to provide all the feed our animals need, and most of our own food as well, right from the farm.

We have found there is not much choice in organic feeds available on this island. The stuff at the local feed stores is USDA-certified organic, but it all has corn &/or soy in it, and most is distributed by Cargill. Not good enough on all three counts.

So we started looking online. We found a wonderful mill in Bellingham, WA, Scratch and Peck Feeds. It is the first--and, so far, only--mill in the US to offer Non-GMO Project certified animal feeds. Their products come from farms in the Northwest (and since that's where we come from too, it's kind of nice to have that connection). There is a distributor on Maui, but they didn't seem much interested in forming any sort of working relationship with us on the Big Island. No problem. We'll bring it in ourselves.

Since we have to order it by the pallet-load (one ton), and we want to maintain the freshness of the feed, there will be extra to sell. In talking to a few farmer friends, we figured there is enough interest out there that this could work.


We will be bringing in Scratch and Peck's Naturally Free line of chicken layer feed and scratch grains, as well as the pig feed -- all organic, non-gmo, no corn or soy, high protein, and well-balanced feeds. You can click on the labels below to enlarge and read the ingredients.



 

The first shipment is already on its way. I can hardly wait to start giving this quality feed to our animals! And I'm looking forward to touring the mill while I'm in Bellingham later this summer.


In the meantime, Mike is designing and building a moisture-resistant, rat-proof storeroom for the incoming feed sacks. Because, you know, we really needed another project around here.


*Still waiting for Spot's litter... only a couple more days.
*The farm book is currently being formatted for publication. Won't be long now!

Piglets... and more piglets!

Big Mama's delivery went smoothly without a single hitch, 10 healthy piglets... and it was during the daytime, too. It doesn't get better than that. I'm late in reporting it because I've been concentrating on the farm book, which is getting closer and closer to publishing. (We also have another new project in the wings which will get its own post shortly.)

Back to the piglets:
Our daughter wrote about "Piglet Birthing Day" on her photo blog. She said I could share the link since I haven't had time to write about it. So, go take a look, and I'll get on with finishing up that book.

We let the sac fall away on its own naturally.

Mama & newborns getting sprayed with LAB during her labor.

The only assistance needed was to right away clean nose and mouth of each piglet.

Oh, I should mention that we are down to 7 healthy piglets from this first litter. Two got squished, and one got lockjaw after castration. We're pondering the idea of not castrating in future; we'll see.

 More piglets still on the way: Spot's due next week. Stay tuned!

Things We Learned From the Latest Farrowing

First off, a little catch up.

Our piggery currently consists of 5 finished pens housing 18 pigs of various ages. It sounds like a lot, and it certainly is, although 13 of them are new piglets.

Hammy, who weighs in at 180 pounds, will be filling our freezer soon.

His sister, Freckles, is 170 pounds and almost old enough to breed, but we may just sell her instead.

Penelope is our other gilt. She has come into heat once, so she'll likely be bred soon... or we may sell her too. She weighs 245 pounds and is cousin to the other two. She's a little older, and therefor a little bigger than they are. (Sorry, no pic of Penelope at present.)

Big Mama and Spot were both bred last August and just recently they each had their second litters. Recently... as in November 26th and 28th, respectively.


Okay, now for the lessons we learned from this last farrowing.

1. Don't do the AI too early (or too late). We think this is what happened with Spot, as she had only 5 piglets. Seeing that this was her second litter, we expected many more than that. On the other hand, they're sure growing fast without much competition for milk.

2. Don't breed the sows at the same time. It makes for a heck of a lot of work at farrowing time and hardly any sleep for us. Mike says the reason he did it this way was to pay less for the shipping of the semen, and for the potential cross-fostering of the piglets. Unfortunately, because they ended up having their litters 2 days apart, the cross-fostering thing didn't work out. (We tried.) It works best to do this within the first 24 hours or so.

3. NO fresh wood chips. We thought we were doing a favor to prep the pens for birthing by giving them a nice clean layer of fresh chips. WRONG! Warm, wet wood chips that haven't yet been inoculated with IMO's harbor the bacteria that causes mastitis. We learned this the hard way. Both our girls, one after the other, got sick with high fever, inflamed udders, loss of appetite. They just lay in misery, ignoring their piglets because they were so out of it with fever. Mike had to go out to the barn every hour, night and day, to prod them until they rolled over to nurse their piglets. Sadly, Spot lost one of her piglets during this time. Mastitis is serious stuff. We had to give the sows penicillin injections, spray them and their pens with lacto, spread IMO4 all over the bedding like crazy... and in a few days they were back on their feet, eating, and nursing well again - thank goodness!

4. Don't wait too long to assist birthing. I think we could have possibly saved a couple of Big Mama's piglets if we had gone in to assist sooner than we did. She would have had 12, but 2 were born dead. Next time, we won't wait as long.

5. Restrict feed on the due date. Pigs are reliably prompt with their due date. We did give Big Mama less feed that morning, but apparently, it was still too much. Poor Mama was throwing up with every contraction. Since Spot was a couple days later, she benefited from her sister's experience and got less feed on her due date. That seemed to help.

All in all, we are a little disappointed in having only 15 piglets born. Since it was the second litters for these sows, we thought there would be more. But we can see where circumstances may have contributed to the lower birth and survival rates, and will correct them for next time. I should mention, we lost one more piglet to internal injuries due to being stepped on, poor little thing. Thus, there are 13 piglets left to sell at weaning time.

Still, all thirteen piglets are thriving under the excellent attentiveness of their mothers.

Second Litter of the Season

The waiting time is over!  Spot had her babies last week.  Eight more healthy piglets!  This time it was 7 males and 1 female, just the opposite of Big Mama's litter.  The birthing went well.  Spot was restless at first but after a while she finally just lay down.  Only two required a little help from us.  We sprinkled extra IMO in between babies to help keep the flies down.  The whole thing only lasted about 5 hours.  Way to go, Spot!

These were from a Hampshire-Yorkshire cross boar, so two of the piglets are mostly black, with white forefeet.

Mama Spot and all eight piglets are doing really well.  Looks like we finally have the good mothering instincts we were looking for.  We will keep two of the gilts from the first litter to increase our breeding stock.  The rest of the piglets will be sold off at weaning time, at about 6 weeks of age.  This means that the first litter is ready to go now, and many of them have already been picked up and headed off to their new homes.  These little new ones will be ready in another 5 weeks.  It's amazing how fast they grow!

Announcing the Second Generation Natural Farmed Pigs!

The piglets are here! Eight healthy piglets were farrowed May 16, 2012 by our sow Big Girl. (Those who have read past posts may recall that Big Girl was born here last year, on the 4th of July, in the first ever litter of NF pigs!)

Farrowing began at 1:35pm and continued all afternoon until about 7:00pm. After the first five, there was a pause of an hour or so before the other three came out. The placentas were all delivered easily and buried with a sprinkling of IMO4. No smell, no flies!

This litter has 7 females and only 1 male, so we won't have to do any castration this time. Normally, we would do this at 7-10 days old.

Big Girl, now Big Mama, is an excellent mother with her natural instincts intact and an ample milk supply. We couldn't be more pleased about that! All the piglets are thriving, even without heat lamps or creep area. There is enough room for mother and babies in the pen, and Mama is responsive to the babies so no worry about her squishing them.

 

Big Mama's appetite came back the next morning, and she is now getting extra feed to accommodate her extra nutritional and caloric needs during lactation. We divide her feed so she gets her usual amount in the mornings and an extra feeding in late afternoon. She has been sprayed with LAB a couple times to help prevent disease. We don't give inoculations, but rather, let the IMO's keep the animals healthy. The entire pen was sprinkled with IMO4 and sprayed with LAB, both before and after the birth. So far, so good. All the piggies are healthy and thriving!

Time to Catch Up, Part 2: The Pigs

Our original two sows, Lola & Suey, made delicious additions to our freezer and our diet. Not being one to waste food, or a life, I have learned to make use of as much of the animals as possible. I make bacon with the belly meat, render beautiful healthy lard, and we've ground some of the meat into breakfast sausage. Pig trotters make a lovely addition to stew and broth... but I have yet to tackle head cheese. There are a few other choice bits still in the freezer, for future use. The bones, after being boiled for nutritive bone broth, are picked clean by the chickens, then charred to make Water-soluble Calcium Phosphate, one of our Natural Farming inputs.

Last fall, we had a big mahalo lu'au to thank everyone who helped us get started on our pig-raising venture. Hulihuli was delicious!
 

We kept Suey's two biggest daughters, Big Girl & Spot. They have both been bred via artificial insemination. We've been using semen from the boars at UH-Hilo's Panaewa research farm. Big Girl is due next week! Spot has another 6 weeks to go. We keep getting asked how long a pig's gestation period is. The answer is a fun one to say: 3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days.

You can read about the pen preparation in the previous post. Here, I will tell about what we are currently feeding our pigs. Every morning, each sow gets 4-1/2 lbs commercial pig feed. (NOTE: This is why we are working so hard on raising our own crops, to replace this commercial feed and still maintain the proper protein, amino acids, and nutrient levels. We're getting there, but not there yet. Mostly, we're waiting for the plants to grow bigger, and of course, planting more crops.) To this feed, we add a handful of IMO4. They also get at least 1-2 lbs of fresh greens -- honohono grass is a current favorite, or whatever else we gather that morning. And they get a half a coconut each. Sometimes, later in the day, as a treat, there is papaya, avocado, kabocha, or whatever might be in abundance. We don't feed these fruits and vegetables exclusively though, as many hereabouts do, because pigs need protein and fats to really thrive, and that's what we're aiming for -- their long term health.

When the sows start nursing, their diet will change to accommodate their increased needs to ensure a good milk supply. Their feed increases to 5-6 lbs commercial feed each, plus another 1/2 lb per piglet she's nursing. More greens will be added, too.

 When Big Girl lays down these days, we can see the babies inside moving around! It's so amazing! Her teats are getting huge and all the signs of birthing preparation are beginning to show. But she has yet to begin digging her nest, so we have a little time still. I'll let you know when the piglets are born. Won't be long now!