Thursday, April 3, 2014

Mulefoot Babies


We've been looking for years for a Mulefoot Boar to breed,
 and haven't been able to find a fella for the job.
We generally have a fairly closed herd (we raise most of our own stock),
 but recently brought in two Registered Mulefoot gilts and boars. This year we bred our
 Mulefoot gilts to a Red Wattle, and while we expect beautiful animals out of that breeding,
we are excited to be able to breed our own pure Mulefoot hogs,
 in part because that will help to preserve such a rare heritage breed.

Livestock farming is all about long-range planning.
 Conventional hog farms raise a pig to size (from birth to 200 lbs.) in 5 months.
Most of our heritage breeds grow to size in 9-10 months.
Mulefoot grow more slowly- with an average age at slaughter (on our farm) of a year or more.

These little guys will have piglets next spring (2015)
and those piglets will be ready for harvest in the spring of 2016.


The four amigos- Here they are housed in a training pen.
You can't tell from the picture, but these piglets are about the size of house cats.
They're a little small to be reliable in electric fencing, and will be trained to electric in this pen.
 (Pen is outdoors and about 16x64 feet, for the four piglets).









1 comment:

  1. Hi, do you have Mulefoot piglets for sale?

    ReplyDelete