Farming Friends

My five remaining gilts from my sows’ first litters are nearly 6 months old. They are lovely good natured Saddleback pigs. They have been raised in the barn and have enjoyed playing in the straw, rooting for clumps of grass and fodder beat, dashing about the barn and playing with a football or empty milk container. The pigs have at times spotted the barn door and wandered into the neighbouring pig pen, but they have never walked down the step into the fold yard.

As we are taking the pigs to a sale on Saturday we decided it would be good for the pigs to get used to walking as they will have to walk from the trailor to their pen and from the pen to the sale ring. In training the pigs I have got the pigs to leave their barn and walk through the neighbouring barn and in the last few days they have managed to walk down the steps and into the fold yard. To get them to walk down the step I placed some fodder beat at the bottom of the steps. Four of the pigs went down with a little encouragement from me but one of the girls wouldn’t go down the steps. I didn’t force her and waited til the following day and I made sure that the fodder beat was close enough for her to reach for and without any help from me she eventually went down the step.

It is interesting to watch the pigs. Whilst being curious they can also be quite nervous when faced with a new place or situation. It was fun to watch the pigs grow with confidence and venture further away from their familiar territory. They began to get confident and curious about the cattle that were also feeding at the troughs in the fold yard. I did laugh when the pigs got close to the cattle and then upon hearing an unfamiliar noise dashed back to their barn woofing all the way.

I will be sad to see these lovely gilts go off to the rare breed sale but unfortunately I cannot keep them. I will miss them but I have lots of fond memories to look back on.

Click on the image below to visit Amazon.co.uk to find out more about this book or visit one of the Farming Friends Bookshops.

Last week I planted some tomato seeds.

The TopVeg website was able to provide me with excellent seed sowing information. 

Farming Friends & TopVeg have now collaborated to create a How To Grow Tomatoes growing card.

Click on the image to enlarge and if you wish to print off this growing card, right click on the enlarged image and then click print picture to print out a copy. If you would like this document as a pdf, just contact farmingfriends and I will email you the document. 

I intend to print off copies and then laminate the sheet so that I can use the growing card in the future.

Teachers, children, vegetable growers and anyone interested in growing tomatoes are welcome to print off this growing card for their own use.

Other growing cards we have already created;

• How To Grow Garlic.
• How To Grow Lettuce.
• How To Grow Summer Radish.
• How To Grow Beetroot.
• How To Grow Broad Beans.
• How To Grow Parsley.
• How To Grow Sage.
• How To Grow Onions.

If you have any other growing cards that you would like Farming Friends & TopVeg to create then please leave a comment and we will be happy to create it for you.

I received an email asking if guinea fowl can mix with peacocks and how they can be separated,

“We have recently received 2 male peacocks. Ever since introducing them into our little farm one of the female guinea’s will only stay with the peacocks. I know this is a dumb question, but can they mate, and how do I get the guinea to return to the others?” Tracey.

From my reading about poultry, I believe that different birds from different breeds can mate, (although they generally stay with their own breed) so your guinea fowl may mate with the peacocks.

The female may feel that she doesn’t have a male guinea fowl mate so has latched onto the peacock males. Guinea fowl tend to pair off and then the male guinea fowl will protect and guard over the female guinea fowl. Your female guinea fowl may not have this. So one solution could be to introduce more male guinea fowl into your flock. If you do this you may also need to separate the guinea fowl and peacocks for a time so that the female can join up with the male guinea fowl. You may need to separate the peacocks and guinea fowl altogether if a short separation does not solve the problem.

If the guinea fowl are shut up at night in a hut they may need to be separated from the peacocks, it the guinea fowl roost in trees at night it might be that you need to keep the guinea fowl in a run or hut for a few days so that they can re-establish a pecking order without the presence of the peacocks, who have obviously won the affection of your female guinea fowl.

I hope this is of some help to you. If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me and good luck with your guinea fowl and peacocks.

If anyone else has any experience of guinea fowl mixing with peacocks then I would be interested to hear your comments.

Can anyone help me to identify this perennial flower? It grows in full sun and the leaves are small and slim. The flowers are pink with a hint of white on them and the stigma and stamen in the centre are very yellow.

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Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As The Garden Grows for more information.

Here are a few photographs taken on the day that the piglets were born (Thursday 10th April 2008).

These are British Saddleback piglets that are less than a day old.

Farmers and pig owners may decide to teeth clip a piglets needle sharp teeth when they are young. This can be done as it helps to stop the piglets from marking the other piglets as they fight over the sows teats and fight for a pecking order and it also helps to reduce the risk of the sow damaging her teats or getting an infection.

We used proper teeth clippers to clip the teeth of our 21 piglets when they were a couple of days old. The job is alot easier when the piglets squeal a little as they reveal their teeth when they do this, although it is not an easy job to do if you get a piglet that likes to wriggle as you then have to be extra careful not to damage the tongue and gums.  Clipping their teeth when the piglets are only a few days old is recommended as they are much easier to handle.

Piglets need to have iron given to them within the first five days of their life. This is particularly important if the piglets are indoors as mine are. We injected the 21 piglets on our farm when they were 2 days old. We injected them with gleptosil into their bottom. This is not an easy job to do as the piglets do not like to be held and wriggle. We have since found out that a good way of holding a piglet is by one leg, although it doesn’t sound nice the piglet doesn’t wriggle about and this means that the injection can be done more quickly and therefore is less stressful for the piglet. We only wish we had known this tip before we had injected all 21 piglets with the iron injection!