Want to know our worst nightmare as your organic livestock farmers?
The pigs roaming around the neighborhood like a pack of wolves. Now that I’m thinking about it though, maybe wolves aren’t destructive enough for this analogy.
Let’s replace the wolves with a family of Tyrannosaurus Rexes on the loose. And now you can imagine what our worst nightmare on the farm really looks like!
For this reason, we’ve always wanted to install a perimeter fence around the farm. We want to make sure that we’d have a fail safe in case the pigs got out and started to roam.
But it turns out, this would be an extraordinarily costly investment – Greg says it would cost upwards of $30,000 and that’s if we do the time intensive work of installation all by ourselves.
The fence still may be an inevitability someday, but over the years, we’ve been thinking that while the perimeter fence might put our minds at ease, it probably isn’t necessary.
And here’s why…
When our pigs get out of their paddocks (which does happen from time to time), with very rare exceptions, we find them hanging out by their fence line, trying to figure out how to get back in.
Why they do this on our farm instead of spook and flee the way we hear about pigs behaving on other people’s farms, comes back the way we raise them.
You see, we don’t ever buy pigs from animal auctions or from other farmers, which are very common practices elsewhere.
Instead, we do all the breeding here on the farm which means our pigs were born here and raised here and have been under our care from start to the finish. They know us and they know these acres to be their home. And in this way, running away just doesn’t look all that appealing.
Other reason why they don’t seem to wander is because we make sure they have all their needs met – not just the physical needs of water and food. We make sure they have a low stress living environment with fresh air, healthy pastures, and space to be curious and explore.
I guess you could say we’re making a bet here and trusting that our good animal husbandry practices will be all the protection that we need. I’m comforted by the fact it’s never – not even once – steered us wrong before.
Your Farmers,
Jenney & Greg
PS – Have you checked out our new website yet? Take it for a spin and place your first order HERE. Keep in mind that if you had an account on our old website, you’ll need to create a new one at checkout.
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