It's Moving Day!

hey everybody welcome back to living traditions homestead well it is going to be a big day for all of the pigs on the homestead today pretty much every pig on the homestead i think except for myrtle is going to get a new home today well charlie is not going to get a new home but he's getting new roommates today so it is an exciting day for him as well but first we have chores to do so let's get started [Music] well this morning we're starting out with the rabbits they all need water from overnight this actually is going to be one of the bucks that we're holding back from that first litter that we had that you guys saw he is about seven weeks old so we're excited to add one more buck to our herd [Music] now because the temperatures are still freezing overnight and sometimes during the day we're still using rubber pans to give them water these girls over here are also from that litter and they are ready to go we have three of them that are for sale [Music] and three of them are already spoken for [Music] hey buddy [Music] [Music] we get a lot of comments and questions about us using these cages for our rabbits and why we use them and you know we do have rabbit tractors that we put our rabbits down on the ground to eat grass and things and why are we not using them especially this time of year why do we have the rabbits up in cages well there are several reasons for that the first and main reason is we do all of our breeding up in these cages like this because it's a much safer environment for the uh the rabbits and for the the baby rabbits the kits but over winter this is a really good solution for us because we can control the environment a lot better for them keep them out of the wind keep them out of the rain and keep them warmer and protected but also during the winter more predators come out trying to get them and this is safer for them in that way also you know in the rabbit tractors in the winter there's really not any grass all the grass is dead and uh when it snows you're moving it on top of snow and overall for us this just works best for us in the winter all right let's go take care of the quail so there's not a whole lot to do with the quail on days when the water isn't frozen which today it's not it's at least a little bit above freezing in here so all of their automatic waters are working which is great but it does look like everybody needs some food i have switched what i'm feeding them just a little bit so let me show you what i'm doing what i've started doing is mixing half chicken layer crumble and half game bird feed which still keeps the protein pretty high but gives them some more calcium for their eggs it seems to be making a good difference on my current layers so uh and the good thing is the chicken feed is less expensive than game bird feed so it saves me a little money as well i just mix it one bag with one bag by doing that it really seems to be making the shells of their eggs nice and strong i'm happy with the way these j feeders are working out on the cages that i built as well their quail will always waste some food but they're not wasting much at all which is good looks like we got our first egg of the day from the jumbo wilds now these birds just moved to this grow out cage from the brooder yesterday they're three weeks old they're fully feathered so they're able to handle the cold now let's top off their food a little bit so these guys are still on starter game bird feed these are ones that i hatched out from my original layers some really pretty colors in this group i'm really happy with the way that they look [Music] morning chickens [Music] to start [Music] when the old one's gone [Music] oh [Music] are you ready girl [Music] [Music] [Music] on my [Music] is [Music] cows need some hay so we're going to distract them with some some cubes and cow cubes or range pellets and then kevin can bring in the hay we can move the hay feeder and they'll be set for a couple days um so [Music] [Music] [Music] good day [Music] [Music] there's no time [Music] is [Music] come on [Music] well chores are done for the morning and so we've got the livestock trailer hooked up to the tractor right now and it's time to get going with what we need to do today with the pigs well the most important thing that we need to accomplish today so we're going to work on that first is we need to load dolly into the livestock trailer now many of you have had questions about the pig that we've been calling dolly for the last several months she is a pig that we've been raising for the last year for meat she was actually out of myrtle's uh first litter that she had last winter and so dolly is the one that we've decided to keep back and we've been raising her for meat and today's the day she's going to go to the butcher now a lot of you have been saying can't we spare her can't we please just let her live because she's such a nice pig and how dare we take a pig to the butcher that we've given a name to and that's a little bit about what we wanted to talk with you guys about today well before we really go much further i do want to point you guys to a video that we did not too long ago maybe a year or two ago called why we eat the animals we love and that really explains a lot about what we do here in our mindset about raising all of our own meat so make sure you check that out but really the bottom line is you know we picked out dolly specifically to raise as meat for our family and ultimately that is her purpose and that is why we're not sparing her and letting her stay on the homestead forever the truth you guys is that every pig we raise is a nice pig because we treat them nicely while they're alive yes sometimes we even give them names even if they're going to be a meat animal you know when we're coming out to feed animals in the morning it's nice to be able to have a name to call uh otherwise we just i mean if we just call her pig i mean then her name is pig so right we just we sometimes we still name animals even if they're gonna end up being meat um that's just part of the homesteading life if you're going to be raising animals for meat i don't know how to say it really i guess in a really nice way you guys but sometimes you just need to get over it i mean you need to just decide in your head that that is part of raising animals if you're going to be raising them for meat you need to go from day one knowing that that animal you deserves the best life that it can have while it's on your farm but that ultimately you're gonna do what you set out to do with that animal which in this case is for her to become food for our family now this year we're doing something pretty different i i don't think in the last four or five years we've used a butcher for our hogs we've done it all ourselves and it's been a fantastic learning experience so we feel like we do a good job now yeah we've actually gotten pretty good at it yeah so why on earth are we taking dolly to a butcher well there's several reasons why first of all this year because we have the homestead and we have the farm things have just been crazy busy and so we decided that this year we've raised her we've put in all of that work we're just going to skip the part of processing her ourselves this year the other reason is that going forward we would really like to start raising pigs to sell at butcher size and take them from our farm to the butcher and then sell them to people you know sell them as and you know half hog whole hog and that kind of thing so there's one butcher in our area that we're trying out this go round because we think it's really going to be a good fit for the customers that we're going to have in the future so we really want to know the quality of work from this particular butcher so that when we're taking our animals for our customers that we're confident in their skills and confident in the quality of the work that they do yeah we should we certainly wouldn't want to sell meat to someone if we haven't personally tried the meat from that processor ourselves so it'll be a win-win for us and hopefully our future customers okay guys so we have a lot to do not only do we need to load dolly into the livestock trailer there are a lot of other moving around of the pigs that we want to do we've got uh we've got ginger in with charlie she's done breeding with him hopefully but we've got two others that we want to put in with him the piglets that are left that we're going to be raising you know myrtle had a litter of six we sold four kept two those are ready to come out and have their own space so just really a lot of moving around to do and we want to get that done today because honestly this is the last warm day for at least um a week so we want to get this done while it's still pretty warm all right so the first thing i'm gonna do is hop back on the tractor we're gonna move the trailer into position so we can try to load dolly into the trailer [Music] hold up hold up hold up you're too close over here turn turn turn turn all right so we've got the trailer backed up we've got kind of a temporary shoot made here going up to the trailer i'm hoping i can get dolly in here by herself without myrtle trying to come out and then we'll try to get dolly into the trailer after we accomplish that [Music] do we need any feed in the trailer already here dolly tap her up like all right okay hold on number one yeah if she gets in that trap can you get that door set [Music] yeah i'm gonna need you out here yeah now can we shut that if we need to yeah we'll have to get the opportunity pick this up close it that way and slam it closed [Music] hold on hold on hold on she's she's not even hold on okay okay [Music] all right that wasn't too bad that required patience but that wasn't no it took about 10 minutes total that wasn't very stressful with pigs we've learned is to be calm the more worked up you get the more worked up they get so that was great all right that is the number one thing we needed to get done i need to pull the trailer out of here and then we'll move on to next we're gonna have to move ginger back in with myrtle right [Music] there the next step is to get ginger out here into this kind of hallway section for lack of a better word and then we can move her over in with myrtle when we designed our pens we've designed them all so that the gates work in such a way that we can easily move pigs back and forth and it's been working really well for the last couple years that we've had this system now so basically by moving one hog panel around we can make different configurations to move pigs back and forth so now we'll put this one here wire it up here and again if you're staying calm usually the pigs will stay pretty calm too and then you don't have to worry too much now part of it's also a breed thing the ipps are such calm pigs that um you know and they're so familiar with us that we know kind of what we can get away with as far as you know steering them in the right direction and stuff if it's a pig that you're not familiar with you need to be more careful all right so we're going to open this gate to try to let ginger out but try to not let charlie out all right so i've got this gate unlatched so we've got this gate unlatched first we're going to get myrtle out or ginger out here come on ginger charlie here ginger ginger i might be able to drag that hmm okay i'm gonna open this all right good girl jinger you ready to go back in with myrtle come on good girl [Music] all right move number two is done ginger and myrtle are back together all right so the next move is for donna and linda to move in with charlie so we've set up we've moved our hog panel over here when this gate opens it'll cover up this gap right here and then they can come out into this section and then we'll open up charlie's gate and we'll just move them right over into charlie's pen now donna and linda are are going to be first-time moms after they get bred this time they're both gilts once they once they have babies once they have piglets they'll become sows donna is nine months old and linda is eight months old and uh so it is time for them to get bred for the first time all right we're going to open up their gate and get moving that's good that's fine here hey girls look all that there we go all right they are in charlie gets two new roommates all right that is move number three and four uh now to move the next two which are the two piglets they are now going to move into the pen that donna and linda just came out of so that they can get out of the pen where they were born that would be the last move for the day and everyone will be settled in now the piglets their pen doesn't connect to the pen or isn't anywhere near the pen that they need to go to so luckily they are still small enough that i can grab them i'm going to grab them by the back legs and we're going to carry them over into the pen now i'll tell you they're getting strong they're about nine weeks old now and they are getting strong so once i got a hold of them i need to get them over there as quickly as i can all right let's try to get the first one here we have two left now these will be the two that we're raising for meat for next year so we'll have these for about a year on the homestead one we're raising for us and one we're raising for my mom and dad so they will be food for next year but today we just need to get them moved hey guys uh [Applause] there you go piglets love to scream trust me that wasn't hurting her at all they just love to make noise all right next one [Music] [Laughter] all right that was too much commotion everybody is moved and settling in to where they are going to live for the next few months at least and dolly is loaded in the trailer so this is where we're going to end today's video we need to hook the trailer up to the truck because i'm not driving her all the way to the butcher with the tractor uh we're gonna hook her up to the truck and we need to get on our way we hope that you guys enjoyed the time that you spent with us today on the homestead moving these pigs around and just kind of seeing what all goes into it hopefully after today not only ginger will be bred and ready to have her first litter but hopefully linda and donna will as well and we'll be having lots of ipp piglets next summer now these uh two gilts that went in are registered and ginger is registered guilt as well so we'll be able to start selling uh registered ipps when all these piglets come out and they're ready to go to their new home you guys if you're enjoying what you're seeing here on our channel we would love it if you would hit the subscribe button below and remember that the best way that you can help us here is to just share our videos on your social media until next time thank you so much for stopping by our homestead take care and god bless god bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 178,002

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing

Id: aS2EYtfY3kA

Length: 26min 26sec (1586 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 26 2022