The Cottage Smallholder

Thank you for your welcome.  

We have found the pigs so very easy.  The hardest part has been dealing with Defra to get the holding number, etc in place.  In fact, we still havent got all the relevant paperwork that we will need when they go to slaughter - I ring them on a weekly basis to chase them up.

We keep the pigs on some land that belongs to our friends - last year they brought some land on the opposite hillside to us (only a ten minute walk away) which they are building a house on and we have our four pigs along with their four (all Tamworths).  They have also ventured into turkeys - they had six delivered at the weekend but I havent been over to see them yet.  We are hoping to go into a joint bee venture with them next year.

We were lucky to be given two old pig arcs from a farmer who was retiring - they are very expensive to buy.  We use one large one at the moment for the 8 pigs to live in and they all get on together well.  They are contained only by electric fencing - which was rather nerve racking at first but they have never tried to escape - in fact, when we extended the fencing a couple of months ago it took them a good couple of hours to venture past where the fencing used to be.  

They have lots of roots to be going on at and are doing a fantastic job of clearing the ground and we also feed them on pig nuts.  You are not supposed to give them any food that has been in the kitchen because of cross contamination - which means no veg peelings, bread, cake, etc - which of course we don't .   They get all the old plants from the allotment and I visit two fruit and veg wholesalers once a week to collect any old fruit and veg that they are throwing away.  The pigs adore bananas!!!!

Next time we are intending on having between 12 and 20 pigs (between ourselves and our friends) and keeping two sows for breeding.  We havent decided which breed yet - the taste test will help us make that decision.