Prime rare-breed Berkshire pork ready for Easter Feast

Fabulous, succulent pork

Well that time has come again when after all the months of caring for our pigs we are due to produce our first batch of truly home-made pork!  We have gone from visiting prospective boars to transporting the lucky lad, Alphie, to our lucky ladies, Gladys and Mabel, and then much to our amazement having all these piglets appear. 

The meat is planned to be ready for Easter Friday 6th April and this year we will be inviting anyone who wants some meat along to a "Back Street Pigs Sausage Tasting" Evening soon afterwards.

So, if you are interested Half Pig email us at ashtonkeynespigs@gmail.com or call 07834 709 037.

Back Street Pigs at both ends

It was always in our plan to use some of the space at the other end of Back Street if need be but we must admit we hadn't expected to have quite so many there in one go.  As it turned out we had to move all the little piglies there one Sunday morning to a new piglie paradise that Paul had engineered.

He must have spent ages getting it ready, pulling up old hedges and stuff and then the piglies have done the rest rooting around to their hearts content.  A lilttle while ago we had to take the boys away as they were starting to get a little bit "jiggy" with their sisters and cousins and that sort of behaviour is best avoided!

You can read a bit more about our Back Street Pigs here.

Heads down for a pig out!

Captured in all their glory are a few of our young lads.  It's hard work being a growning piglie and takes a lot of effort, especially at meal time, mainly fending off your siblings!

Here you can see a picture of some of our prime boars as they tuck into their daily feast of pig feed.

It's always great to see them getting stuck into their food and rooting around.

The power of a pig's memory

When we first went on our Pigs Paradise course all those many months ago, one of the most amazing sites to us Pig Novices was that of two enormous pigs being kept in place by two strands of wire. 

Initially we were very sceptical that such flimsy material could keep these powerful animals from escaping and we decided to go for a fully fence posted compound.  We've since had to be a little more enlightened in our use of electric fencing for the tremendous flexibilty it offers.

Recently we have moved the two sows across the garden into the orchard, partly to give the main compound a little rest and partly to put the ladies to great use as rotory cultivators rooting over the area that was once fully grassed and is now ready for the long promised raised beds for the veg garden.  Well done girls!

You will notice that the fence has somehow been knocked down but they haven't escaped - once zapped by an electric fence these intelligent creatures remember not to do it again.  Also in the background you can see the new pig house that we manoevered into place earlier that week.

Expansion plans for the growning brood

When you are blessed with 16 piglies in one go that is quite a considerable growth in the size of brood you are dealing with on a daily basis. 

As a consequence we have had to expand not only our pig compound but also our sleeping accommodation.  Paul spotted an advert on e-Bay for some Pig houses and we decided the extra flexibility that it would offer would be a real asset.  It means we can more easily move it around the field so the plan is in the summer to move the sows around and give our primary pig compound a much needed rest.

However, as you can see from this pictureit is quite large, much too large for Paul's trailer as it turns out.  Luckily the people we bought it from up near Daglingworth were immensely kind and allowed us to borrow their trailer to transport it back to Cleveland House.  They were so kind to take pity upon us novices and was a really practical demonstration of how phenomenal the spirit of commaraderie is amongst "pig people"!

Poor little ice breakers

It may not have been the coldest of winters but if you are a little piglie it has got pretty chilly on occasion and this funny white stuff all over the ground is jolly cold and as for the water trough, it is awfully lumpy despite all that banging by our Pig Keepers.

Indeed, we've had to take the hammer to break up the ice on the water trough on more than one occasion this winter.  Still, not as often as we had to last year and at least it was only a hammer and not a pick axe like we had to at one point!

Dressed for action

What lovely present! 

Just before Christmas our lovely wives had sneaked off for a girlie moment and raided our favourite retail outlet at our local CountryWide store to purchase the ultimate in pig raisers gear, all-in-one overalls!

And here are our valiant pig raisers in all their rather snug fitting glory.  Unfortunately the outfits were a little too snug, even allowing for a little extra Xmas padding, fortunately those nice people at CountryWide are entirely used to people buying these suits on the snug side and allowed us to exchange them for ones that are TWO sizes larger than we would normally wear.

Since then they have had pretty much daily usage as they are great to don for those early morning pig feeding sessions in the dark of the early new year.

Green & Black Pigs

Dealing with grass cuttings used to be a real chore. Now it is all part of the fun with our pigs. 

Deprived of grass much of the year they seem only too pleased to get a bit of green thrown over the fence at them.

They love rooting around even more than usual and if we hide their food under it that seems to make it even more fun!

Making Bacon

In short, after much hard work, ringing contacts then ringing contacts of contacts we eventually found a Berkshire boar that was not too far away in Burford.

One morning Neil cycled over like some proper farmer to view the prospective suitor for his gilts, known as Alphie  He met the family who owned him who were raising Alphie in an idylic location adjacent to the old Mill House in Burford.

A few weeks later her was introduced to our ladies and as it turns out it didn't take long at all before he had done the business and we were well on our way to Piglies.