
Going back a few weeks, we struggled with castrating the boars in the previous litters. Castrating the piglets while they are on pasture has been a concern of mine from day 1, and it continues to be a problem in practice. The pigs tend to do fine with pasture farrowing in the warmth of July and August, but they're not too keen on me grabbing their piglets from them. Once the first one starts squealing, they will try to attack me. This time, I actually got bit by a sow on my hand. It wasn't a love bite, either. She very forcibly crunched down on my metacarpal bone and bruised it. I was lucky to not have been injured more severely. There has to be a better way to do this, and we're brainstorming some ideas, including luring the piglets when they're a few weeks older and starting to eat solid food into the barn where we can close the door and protect ourselves from the rampaging sows. I'd love to not castrate, but I've now experienced boar taint in an uncastrated male we raised last year and it's simply not an option. Most people can't detect it, including Jen, but I am certainly someone who can.
On the positive side, we sold all our piglets for $150 each to a farm down the road. I probably could have sold them for a bit more to individuals, but I figure that each additional person I have to deal with costs me about $25 in labor. I've seen some ads in the area for folks advertising weaners for $275, and I think I might try to get $200 for the gilts on this latest litter, as it is a purebred pairing with low inbreeding. $25 makes a huge difference when you're dealing with hundreds of pigs instead of the tens we currently have.