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!

More Piggies Soon!

My goodness how time flies when you're busy busy busy!

Big Mama is almost ready to burst! Only two weeks to go until her third litter is due.  After a short break, Spot will have her piglets in mid-June.  I, for one, am very glad that there will be a three week break between litters this time.

We have been working hard to get lots more planted: sugarcane, mulberries, cassava, moringa, sunn hemp, and sweet potatoes--all food plants for the animals.  We are currently feeding the pigs a third of their daily feed with these plants that we're growing.  Considering how quickly things are becoming well-established, it shouldn't be too much longer until we can produce all our own feed--a day we are greatly looking forward to!

Speaking of feeding, Mike rigged up an automatic feeder of sorts, just using bits and pieces we had lying about the farm: a rotisserie, a timer, scrap wood, metal strapping, a rope, and pulleys.  The timer has a battery back-up.  Basically, he loads up the feed pans with greens, pellets, a split coconut, sugar cane... whatever is on the menu for the day... and then sets each pan on its own shelf above each sow's pen.  At the appropriate time, the timer kicks in and starts the rotisserie which winds up the rope until - voila! crash bang! - the shelves dump the feed into the pens, and it's dinnertime for piggies!  The sows have learned to listen for the click of the motor switching on.  They then move away and wait a couple minutes for their food to drop so they can chow down.  We now can be away from the farm all afternoon, for whatever reason, and not have to worry that our girls are hungry.

The book about our farm (the pigs, chickens, tropical feed crops, and Natural Farming) is coming along.  It's being edited now, and we are looking at a mid-summer publishing date.  I'll keep you posted.

All the photos for this post were taken by our daughter, Kerry Hubbell, and used with permission.  Mahalo!