When we castrated the piglets at three weeks of age, we kept one of the piglets intact. If you remember, all but one of the fatties were boys so the castrating was quite the adventure. My son who is the 4H “master”, helped me decide which one we should keep as a breeder. We looked at the piglets everyday. Everyday. Everyday before we made our decision about which one should be able to keep his manhood. We discussed the characteristics of each of the little boars: which one was the largest, which had the best hams,which was the best natured, which one was the most curious…. which one had the best ears.
His mother has the sweetest ears. They stand up like huge bat wings. You can actually hear them flop when she runs. Whop. Whop. Whop. We were hoping to pass those big sweet ears to more of her babies. So we included “big ears” as one of the decision making characteristics of the boar that we would keep.
After much debate and discussion, we chose Vincent.
And here he is in all his glory. Look at those hams!
Look at those ears!
NOT!
When he was little, he definitely had “Willow Ears”. But not so much now.
I’m not too sure what happened. He just grew these babies: not standing up, not flopping, kind of curly on the edges. I guess big ears in a boar are just not so manly, or boar-ish. Too bad.
But I guess he makes up for his lack of ears by having……um…..trying to be delicate here…..a good package? (Sorry for the rude pics.) Pretty good for a 10 week old pig, I think? Heck, what do I know about good boar parts? We’ll have to wait and see. He won’t be mature enough to breed until August. But he looks good. Right? I think?
In the meantime, here are a few pictures of the 4H pigs the boys chose.
This is the biggest piglet of the 4H bunch. He weighed 72 pounds last week and I’ll bet he’s put on another several pounds. This guy is a porker! (No pun intended. Well, I guess the pun was intended~ HA!) I think Luke is going to call him “Cormac” as in Cormac McCarthy, the American novelist who wrote The Counselor, The Road, No Country for Old Men, Child of God, All the Pretty Horses. You know; that guy.
This is our other 4H pig. He weighed 66 pounds last week. I think his spots are very attractive! Very cosmopolitan, for a pig, that is. I don’t think Daniel has named him yet. I’m voting for “The Boss” or “Jefe” which means “The Boss” in Spanish. Quite the cosmopolitan name for a spotty pig. We’ll see what he decides.
We also have a “back-up” pig. This is a pig we have just-in-case-something-happens-to-one-of-the-other-4H pigs. I’m not sure what “just in case”means. We’ve never had any thing go wrong with any of our other 4H pigs. But I guess it’s a good idea to have a spare, a plan B, if you will. If we don’t need him for the show ring, he will live with us for a couple more months then go to freezer camp.
He weighed 55 pounds last week and you can see the difference between him and Cormac. This little guy doesn’t have a name yet. I think it would be sad to just call him “Plan B” or 89 (see his blue ear tag?). So maybe if Daniel decides to name his pig something like Spot, or Piggie or something non-cosmopolitan, I’ll name this little guy “Jefe”. Maybe giving him a big boss name will inspire him to greatness……like #300!
Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me?
They call me MR. PIG!
Today’s count: 44 eggs, 2 gallons milk.
Supper: Homemade Tomato Basil soup with garlic croutons and cheese bread.
Weather: Sunny, with a high near 79. Light south southeast wind.Low upper 30’s.
