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| "Have you got anything to eat please?" |
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| "We are still waiting!" |
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| 3 big cattle, 3 little cattle. Number one son came up with the poles and tractor exhaust brackets to stop them climbing through the headfeeder bars. |
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| For some reason these 3 are smaller than the other 3. I am sure they will catch up! |
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| One of the calve-ens (the Irish is rubbing off) sampling a buck of mineral lick. |
Lovely to see them all. Thanks for posting. Love the piggies especially :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks for asking to see them CT. They always make us smile. Windy today and showery. Thanks for your comment!
ReplyDeleteLovely photos, thank you for sharing
ReplyDeleteI am glad you like them Bedford Gypsy. Thanks!
DeleteGreat photos Dave, I love pigs (however I also love a bacon sarnie :)
ReplyDeleteTwiggy
Hi Twiggy. Yes they are real characters. We give them a mixed diet of vegetables, pig ration and oats. We don't make much out of them but we have some delicious meals and we know they haven't had any drugs. Thanks Twiggy.
DeleteAll complete with ear adornments.
ReplyDeleteWhat variety are the pigs?
Yes Cumbrian they have to have their ear tags and we keep a pig book, a sheep book and a cattle book. They are reputed to be 'Large Whites'. Are they like the pigs you saw when you were growing up in Cumbria?
DeleteProbably, without realising what they were. The predominant breed were the Cumberland pig, now sadly extinct, a big animal, usually docile and kept to bacon weight. Most farms had a shed with a batch of pigs in, they didn't have the intensive system like now, and they disappeared regularly, one from each batch was often used for home consumption, I can remember hams hanging from hooks in the beams over the kitchen. The purists will say that Cumberland sausage should only be made from Cumberland pigs, but this seems to be ignored, we still have Cumberland sausage, but now it's considered that it must be made in Cumberland.
DeleteOne of our village butchers kept and butched his own, I remember watching him cut a carcase, I'd be about 9 or 10 then, no H&S to worry about. A friend who also watched this turned vegetarian for a few years.
I think the landrace has just about taken over now, from what I believe they produce a lean carcase quickly, everything else seems to classed as a rare breed.
Thanks for telling us that Cumbrian. I didn't know the Cumberland pig was extinct. We don't know what meat we are buying from the supermarkets. do we? Perhaps all meat shoul be sold with details of what breed it is?
ReplyDeleteMy grandparents use to kill the pig and salt it in a barrel to preserve it. It costs around 100 hundred Euros a pig to have it slaughtered and to be made into half pork and half bacon. So you don't really save much by the time you have purchased, fed and slaughtered the pig. But you do have some very good meat and you know what drugs it's had. Thanks!
I used to love feeding animals in the winter. Going into the warm sheds was always so nice. I love the calm when tehy're eating as well.
ReplyDeleteYes Kev it's great to see the livestock feeding contentedly in their sheds.
ReplyDelete