>>5110485
My german shepherd farm is coming along nicely. I have 5 longhairs in a coop and run arrangement. I expect world class kung pao before november.

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Lots of babies born the past month. We're at 47 pigs and one calf. Expecting 20+ more piglets and another calf in the coming months.
Had the first calf born on my property slaughtered last week. Curing his hide before sending it to a tannery to make a rug out of it, and excitedly awaiting the meat to be ready.

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The baby pigs are a joy to have around, but they are already starting to cause trouble. It is especially challenging to keep them contained because they are so small compared to the other animals.

>>5110486
Post some pics of your hobby farm! The puppies must be adorable.

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Last year 25 piglets were born. All gilts giving birth to their first litter. This year over 50 for sure.

One gave birth to 12 or 13 today. Pics tommorow.

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12 piglets total. Everyone survived the night. I think this was her first birth. Seems to be a pretty good mom.
For the first few days the momma pigs just lay in their nest all day so you need to bring them water and food. The watering can is ideal for this. She will chug the whole thing multiple times per day.
The less a sow needs to get up for any reason the better because laying back down always has the risk of accidentally crushing the piglets.

>>5110492
how stinky are they

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>>5110711
About as smelly or less than the 3 cows I have, and only in the area where I feed them just like the cows. The pigs themselves smell pretty neutral.
Very rarely pigs carry a genetic trait that makes them smell like maple syrup. Not sure if I have any, but a while back I got to smell a maple syrup pig and it was pretty good.

>>5110489
omg post more piggies

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>>5110739
:D

>>5110807
Do the moms let you touch the babies?

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>>5110836
Yeah all the moms are very trusting with me, but sadly my pig's stupid genetics are all very skittish. The sows and boars are all super friendly, but their children are skittish for some reason. Apparently it is called hesitancy or something and it is at least somewhat genetic.
Slightly skittish pigs are sort of easier to manage in some ways than super friendly ones, so it's whatever.

>>5110879
I want to play with the babies.

Great pics
I wonder what happened to Tunior (and co), I love cowes

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>>5110975
She and another cow died in a very unfortunate accident. Im not going to share any more details than that.
2 years on and it still bums me out. The calf born last month just randomly died the other day also and I need to bury the corpse today.
The mom was crying about it for the last day and half and wouldnt let me get near it. I feel really bad for her. Thankfully she seems calmer today.

The joy of life will always be balanced by the sorrow of death. Such is life on the farm.

>>5111035
>Im not going to share any more details than that.

Alien cattle mutilations.

Dropped the calf off at a corpse disposal spot nearby because I didn't want to dig a big ass hole. There were 3 large cows that had probably been sitting out decaying for a week or longer. Tons and tons of maggots. Never smelt such a strong decomposing flesh odor before. The smell changed from that normal sickly sweet rotting flesh kind of smell to something more chemically, fermented, and alcoholic. It made me nauseous for about an hour after. Damn.

>>5111099
At least they were used for alien science I guess.

>>5111035
That's sad to hear but thanks for sharing, it gives a random internet stranger some closure

>>5110711
Pigs are pretty smell neutral naturally, they just have very low ventilation requirements, so when not kept free range they'll spend their whole lives surrounded by the intense odor of their shit, piss, and feed. It rubs off on them just like it does the workers.

>>5110486
German shepherd is a poor substitute for proper east asian mutts.

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Going to schedule a meeting with my local NRCS to work on getting land conservation grant money. Hooking up a well for cover crop irrigatio /pig watering, lots of new fencing to protect a riparian corridor, and establishing silvopasture throughout my entire pasture.
Didn't realize how sick a well strategized grant could be. If all works out I could be saving tens of thousands of dollars on shit I was already to build entirely out of pocket.

I've also been looking into getting USDA certified and there is a shitload of forms you have to fill out for your OSP. Goddamn I hate paperwork enjoy some baby pigs.

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Picked up my beef today. 643lbs total. All in I'm somewhere between 5-6 dollars/lb in terms of feed and butchering costs. 181lbs of ground beef, six bags of bones, and the rest is steaks, roasts, and stuff for grilling.
The meat straight out of the freezer bags has an aroma of grass and milk. Really nice smell.
Bull meat is always going to be leaner than steer, but apparently the flavor is much stronger. For a 2 year old grassfed bull this is relatively decent marbling.

After sous vide for 3 hours @129F I'm going to fire up the grill for the final sear. Will post results.

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Nice place you've got there... would be a shame if the wind were to blow any of our pollen onto it...

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Here is the cooked meat. Overcooked it a bit on the grill trying to get a sear, but thankfully the meat was still very juicy and tender. I need to add some oil before searing next time because the meat is so lean.
I was suprised by how tender this sirloin steak was. Just as tender as a normal steak.
Taste was excellent. Beefier than usual with some extra minerally sort of flavors. Definitely not gamey like some people say. The fat was delicious. Firmer and less greasy feeling than normal with a good grassfed beef type of taste.

Overall I would say this was a great success, and an amazing culmination to over 2 years of work. It will probably take the two of us over a year to finish all the meat.

>>5112665
It is still crazy to me how they can sue farmers for cross pollinated plants growing in their fields.

>>5112645
all that meat and you start off by boiling it in microplastics? embarrassing, anon

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>>5112674
>muh ck memes
It's all already been packaged in plastic. Sous vide is great for going from frozen to cooked without waiting for meat to thaw, and 129F is pretty low temp. I admit it is not ideal, but I'm willing to sacrifice a little for the convenience. I avoid so much plastic in other aspects of my life it barely matters, especially with a fairly inert type of heat resistant plastic.
Also a fun fact for you.. 90% of all restaurants use sous vide for heating/cooking food and will also microwave your foods in plastic containers/bags, which is orders of magnitude worse than low temp heating in plastic. :D

>>5112676
>It's all already been packaged in plastic.
that's different from being cooked in plastic.

>90% of all restaurants use sous vide for heating/cooking food and will also microwave your foods in plastic containers/bags
so because retards jump off a bridge, you follow them?

whatever, enjoy fucking up your T levels with your plastics-laden meat.

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Samoans want to buy 15 of my pigs for a wedding, but I think they're too cheap to pay the prices my high quality pork demands. Lol.

The business side of small scale livestock farming is so interesting. Your story is almost more important than the actual product, but the story also needs to be why the product is so good, which then justifies the price being 3-4 times more expensive than shitty pork. But on the flipside organic feed and slow growing breeds of pig are innately expensive to grow out for 12-15 months.
Thankfully I'm in an area where a lot of people know what higher prices gets you in terms of health, flavor,humane conditions, etc. A supermarket has already told us they want to do a trial run with some pork chops and shoulder maybe. We would be in a butcher display fridge right next to niman ranch pork as the local option.

>>5112685
Remarkably bad faith reply, but whatever. I hope you don't use any synthetic bed sheets or clothes.

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>>5112685
He’s already trans it doesnt matter

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Sometimes the piglets are in such a deep sleep you can pick them up and they'll still be sleeping for a little while.

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Illuminati confirmed.

>>5110594
that's a good picture

>>5112690
How do you feel about factory farmed pork and the conditions most pigs are kept in by other farmers?
How are your pigs slaughtered, not CO2 gassing I hope?

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>>5113599
Factory farmed pigs are possibly one of the worst because pigs are such smart and feeling animals with strong natural instincts. Rotational pasture like I'm currently re-establishing on my property is ideal because they live outside with plenty of space, always have fresh pasture to forage, and actually get to be pigs.
Rotational pasturing done right also improves soil quality and even helps with carbon sequestration. Eventually I will have meat birds following the pigs, which is one of the best combos for rotational pastures. The birds spread the pig manure, add their own, and help eat/kill parasites.
There are other ways to raise pigs outside that don't include rotational pasture that I like, but any sort of bare earth/heavily mulched feedlot style outdoors is kinda cope for a humane/natural life system. Outdoors is better than 100% indoors, but still not ideal.

I believe my usda slaughter guys do the electrical stunning + bolt gun.
Aside from healthier and tastier meat I raise pigs and chickens on 100% pasture specifically because it is more humane and the animals get to live a more natural life. I've heard so many people tell me that they could never go back to storebought eggs or pork after trying my products even though the eggs and pork are 2-3x more expensive than what you could buy at costco or whatever. It's pretty cool.

>>5113608
Have you seen Clarksons farm? What do you think of his efforts?

>>5113612
Ive only seen some clips, but I should give the series a watch. Top gear was great.
Culling bad moms, dead babies, and the occasional gore are really sucky things that are basically unavoidable when raising any animals, especially with on farm births.

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>>5113476

>>5113608
How much do you make per year as a pig farmer?

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>>5113652
Zero dollars for now lol. Every penny goes back into feeding the next generation. If all goes well my batch of 25 piglets born on property will at least double the money I put into raising them.
200-500 dollars profit per pig depending on if I sell them whole or as individual cuts. This year 25 pigs, next year 50 pigs. After that probably still 50, but I will make that call once I see how my land handles that many piggies.
The pigs are kind of the side animal compared to our eggs and chickens. I've always wanted to keep pigs, so I'm fine with the relatively low income they generate.
We move around 2k dollars of eggs per week, gross, with 500 hens right now(plans to double that to 1k hens once we improve egg handling infrastructure), and we are working on establishing a minimum 20-30 cases bi-weekly of fresh gourmet/heirloom meat birds for supermarkets and restaurants, which we would sell for somewhere between 5-7 dollar per pound to start off with, so that could potentially be 10k-14k gross per month.
The meat birds are interesting and difficult because you have to grow out/ keep a new batch every 2 weeks. So for a 10 week bird you would need 5 seperate flocks of 200-300 birds. 3 in brooding rooms with heat, and 2 on pasture. 30 cases bi-weekly = 1500 birds in total.
We also want to work on making our own signature breed of ultra premium meat bird that would could sell for even more/lb. Maybe 8-10/lb if it is good enough.
Workload atm is fairly minimal aside from the egg washing/packing, so I look forward to having significantly more work raising the meat birds considering the massive potential they have.

>>5113648
Beautiful.

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PIGPILE!

>>5112676
You warming up plastic brings out much, much more of the harmful substances in it, such as pthalates[1] and bisphenols[2]. The amount can hardly be compared to you packaging the meat in plastic and freezing it.

1 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8157593/
2 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27143250/

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My thread got bumped, cool. I'll post some more pics. :D
The piglets have been free ranging my property for a while, but they finally went too far and started going down the driveway. Patched up all the exit points and now they're stuck in my fields for good.
For the first couple days they'll try to escape and start whining when they fail. It's very satisfying to witness.
Also got 560 more laying hens yesterday. Got a stupid good deal on them at 6 dollars per bird. Normally you pay around 14-15 dollars per bird for 20 week pullets.
We are feeding 10-12 5 gallon buckets of food per day now.

>>5114824
omg

>>5112676
I use silicon sous vide bags

>>5116542
I've got some more cute piglet pics coming up soon. My film is drying right now.

>>5116562
If you're really nitpicking silicon still releases some stuff into your food, apparently. I just use high quality HDPE bags. Ironically they don't contain bpa, bpa analogs or pthalates. Still not ideal, but it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of plastic exposure.
Recycled black plastic cooking utensils are extremely bad. Synthetic fiber underwear and bed sheets are terrible, microwaving in plastic is terrible.

Heating food up to 125 degrees for 2 hours in virgin HDPE or silicon is really not so bad in the grand scheme of things. Don't all canned foods have a plastic liner and go through a heat pasteurization cycle?

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More pics as promised.

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Blurry but still cute.

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That's all for now.

I want a piglet. How much?

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>>5116904
Go to a livestock auction and you can get a weaned piglet for very little money. That's how I got mine.