We were mainly confirming that we could get ours set aside before he gives them certain vaccinations, or sells them to other farms. He's been doing a lot of business with our friends Brad and Heather at the Piggery. Their business seems to be booming, and it sounds like they could buy every piglet Jim raises. We feel pretty lucky that he let us pick out which piglets we want before he sells them off to other folks. Because our pigs are rotated through sections of our pasture, they need to be darker colored to protect against sunburn. A sunburned pig is a really unhappy pig!
We provide them a good sun shelter, as well as a sleeping platform, and move them under the trees before the days get really hot. So yesterday, we headed over to Jim's with mom and dad, and looked over the two-week-old litters. We picked a few of the darker ones and he'll separate them out when the pigs are weaned. None of us -- except mom -- are interested in bottle feeding them, so we'll go back and pick them up in 3-4 weeks, when Jim says they're ready to leave their mother's side.
Because organic feed prices keep going up, we've had to raise our prices slightly to $3.60 a pound; a $100 deposit reserves your half pig. Last fall, Sharon wrote a good summary of how we charge based on their final weight and which processing/packaging options each customer gets to choose. You can read that post here, or just e-mail us and we'll send you the long version with cut sheets and all the processing options.
If we're going to have more pigs this year...then I guess I'd better get going building a larger pig shelter and water/feed cart.
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