As we head into winter, we decided it was a good time to sit down, think about and reevaluate the last year. While we feel the year went pretty well, there are a few things we’d like to do differently. One of the biggest changes we’ve decided to make is decreasing the number of animals we keep through the winter. In the fall of last year we had the opportunity to get a really good deal on a couple of feeder pigs, so we got them. In addition to that, we increased our goat herd because we needed a buck for breeding and we added a few boer goats for 4H projects. All was fine until winter hit. It was a tough winter…. long periods of freezing temperatures with several big snowfalls made it difficult to care for them all. While we planned for our feed costs to be higher since the animals have to eat more to stay warm, it ended up being a lot higher than we expected it to be. So let’s just say… we’ve been eating some pretty expensive pork.
Not wanting to make those mistakes again, one of the first things we did was buy a feeder pig in the spring. That way, there’d be plenty of grass to graze and extra produce from the garden to give, in addition to the regular feed. We noticed a huge difference in feed costs between last winter and this summer. Piglet is all grown up now and will be headed to the butcher at the end of the week…
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Humble Little Homestead 