Life in Abundance
Ah Life… it is in Abundance for us here on the Homestead and we are lovin’ it! Typically our animals we raise are for meat so every year we buy, raise and process them. They don’t reproduce and such but this year there’s been quite different!!
Chicks, Kittens and Piglets!!
It’s really quite special and awe inspiring to see Life being born and I’m always amazed at how God works in every single thing and something being born is just that… complete amazement .
We’ve been incubating lots of chicken eggs for new egg layers (hens) but our success rate per batch is not very high. We are not sure if it’s the Rooster or what. We are currently on our 4th batch of these guys (21 in each) and we only get 5 to 6 chicks to hatch. So there’s something we certainly need to figure out. None the less it’s been fun, they are so cute and tiny and sleepy when their under a week old.
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The “teenagers” as I like to call them have been integrating with the older hens after I built them a very hillbilly fence for a week while they got use to the outside. Check out that Video HERE and see how they try to escape!
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Which brings me to the Piglets!! Oh gosh they are soooo cute and little! I was so thrilled to come out to the back garden to see what I needed to do for the day and I started picking some weeds and went to throw the weeds to the pigs and I said to myself…maybe even out loud “Where’s big momma?”.
Then out of the corner of my eye down at the pig hut I saw something very small moving around. In complete nuttiness I went running and calling for Justin, “the piglets are here, the piglets are here!!” I didn’t want to go down there just yet until we had some feed out for the other pigs even though I was sure they were already around the piglets. It seems they were born during the night, and there is 5 of them and they look good. Last year we had a pregnant pig but look she wasn’t suppose to be and we didn’t know so when I went (last year) checking in on the pigs during the morning I saw something weird in the hut with 2 of the pigs. It was piglets but they were not alive. I was devastated and even thinking about it makes me sad still a year later. You can watch those videos HERE and HERE. So yeah this year…. A big sigh of relief when I saw these piglets alive and healthy!! I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve walked out to check on them so far.
So now onto building a secure location to house mama and piglets during the winter. Up in Northern Michigan we get a lot of snow so it will definitely need to be secure and warm. But it’s July so we’ve got time….right? Right?
