Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[Cadeau]

Elisha~ They are on their way!

Sorry couldn't log in yesterday afternoon or evening to PM or email you the confirmation number. Will do that shortly.

I am sure they will be just fine traveling with the heat....I would worry more about cold temps vs. the heat, but that is just me.


Meanwhile.....here are your eggies.


Beautiful eggies!

 

[Cadeau]

Any of you that own and raise piggies want to send me advise about raising them? Or suggest a good place that I can go and learn about them.

DH would like to add pigs to our little farm. I wonder who he thinks is going to take care of them? LOL!

Funny, after the kids moved out I thought I was done raising pigs.

Vicki~ Darryl took the kids outside yesterday and wouldn't you know it, it was almost dark when she finally ventured out with them. Of course I was doing chores and didn't have my camera with me. She is very good with them. I have camera ready for today as I will be out doing chicken chores today and right by them.

Pink - piggies are EASY!
Just be sure you have a good, HOT fence.

We run ours on the pasture and wooded acreage....they're happy as the proverbial pigs in poop!

Water: Put in a frost free faucet (or maybe you don't need those over there - ?? - ) and hook it up to a pig nipple.
They drink a LOT

Feed: they eat just about anything - I think the only thing I've found they don't like is carrots, which is GREAT with the horses! haha
You can feed them a mix from the mill and mix it 50/50 with water.
Then, supplement the feed and pasture with whatever you have around - they love bread, eggs, table scraps, etc......

They WILL make a mess and need a place to make a mud wallow b/c they don't sweat.
They LOVE to be hosed off!

Pigs are easy to tame and become like dogs! They can learn tricks and enjoy attention and petting.

MUCH easier than teenagers! haha

go for it!!

 

[Debbi]

Any of you that own and raise piggies want to send me advise about raising them? Or suggest a good place that I can go and learn about them.

DH would like to add pigs to our little farm. I wonder who he thinks is going to take care of them? LOL!

Funny, after the kids moved out I thought I was done raising pigs.

Vicki~ Darryl took the kids outside yesterday and wouldn't you know it, it was almost dark when she finally ventured out with them. Of course I was doing chores and didn't have my camera with me. She is very good with them. I have camera ready for today as I will be out doing chicken chores today and right by them.

All I can say is build a VERY stout pen! Pigs are great escape artists, and can do major damage to yard and house in a very short time! Luckily, they can be caught fairly easily with some feed, they are afterall, pigs!

I used cattle panels for the pens, hogs panels are even better. Pigs love to dig, so a stout apron on the inside of the pen can help there. I tried using electric fencing with mine for a short period, until they found out that they could short out the fence by piling dirt or feed pans up against the wire! Pigs are very smart critters!! They should also have a mud bath and a dry bath area as well, as pigs don't sweat. The quality of their meat will be based on what you feed them. If you feed nothing but "slop", waste food and such, it changes the taste. They will eat anything you throw in there, but a good feed mix will really improve the meat taste, in my opinion. I used to mix mine with corn, pig pellets, alfalfa cubes, and mix it with left over goat's milk! That was the best meat of all when I had the goats!! They love attention and are such a hoot to watch play! You'll have to set up some chairs near their pen to watch Pig TV!

They need something to entertain themselves too. I had one of those horse balls, can't think of the name of them now, big, yellow, hard nylon ball (Nyla-Ball?), and they had a blast with that thing playing Pig Soccer! Good excercise for them to make more muscle and keep the meat leaner. Castrate the boys early on, can't remember when that was, like a month or two, whenever both testes drop? They grow fast, so the more handling you give them, the easier it will be to keep them tamer and easier to handle. Put them in an area that you don't need to look at or don't EVER want to use as garden ground; they will deplete the soil and leave you with rocks only. Oh yes, and Fortex rubber tubs for food and water as I explained previously. I like pigs, and the pork chops from fresh are out of this world, as is the bacon!!

 

[pinkchick]

Thank you Cad and Debbi!
I will be sharing this information with Rick and we will be researching more as well. He is not sure what breed he would like....LOL, he didn't know that he had choices. I should have never opened my mouth about choices.

Thanks again.








Marans, Marans

 

[Cadeau]

To add to what Debbi and I have above:
We find the pasture raised pigs taste the best and are NOT tough or stringy.

We also find our Berkshires taste the best and are the juciest, over the other breeds or crosses.

We feed the milk from the newly freshened cows and they LOVE it!!
(can't put the milk with colostrum in the tank)

We tried the pint of Guiness and SOs cousin tried other beers (supposed to make them sweeter and juicier), but we found we liked the milk fed pigs the best.

Our newest batch, that just went to the butcher, was fed on goat's milk, so we'll see!

Unlike Debbi - we have better luck with a VERY HOT strand of wire.
If you train them on it young, they do really well with it
BUT - once they learn that it is sometime off or low, they WILL go traveling...

With the pig panels, we found they learned they could just lift them and walk off!
(we're working in a rotational pasture situation)

 

[Debbi]

I always went with either Yorkshires or Hampshires. Crosses of the two breeds works well too. Had one Duroc, didn't care for them.

 

[Cadeau]

Ok - back to Marans

As I was gathering eggs this morning, I was thinking -
People talk about "only setting the darkest eggs", but most also report that egg color is best at the beginning of the laying cycle and diminishes as time goes on.

So...do people REALLY only set the darkest EGGS or do they only set the eggs from the darkest LAYERS??

I would think that a girl who starts with a 6.5 and diminishes to a 5.5 or 5 as the cycle goes by would still give the same genetics to her offspring, no matter what the time in the laying cycle....right??

Am I over thinking this?
Maybe my brain is fried from all this heat! haha

 

[Debbi]

To add to what Debbi and I have above:
We find the pasture raised pigs taste the best and are NOT tough or stringy.

We also find our Berkshires taste the best and are the juciest, over the other breeds or crosses.

We feed the milk from the newly freshened cows and they LOVE it!!
(can't put the milk with colostrum in the tank)

We tried the pint of Guiness and SOs cousin tried other beers (supposed to make them sweeter and juicier), but we found we liked the milk fed pigs the best.

Our newest batch, that just went to the butcher, was fed on goat's milk, so we'll see!

Unlike Debbi - we have better luck with a VERY HOT strand of wire.
If you train them on it young, they do really well with it
BUT - once they learn that it is sometime off or low, they WILL go traveling...

With the pig panels, we found they learned they could just lift them and walk off!
(we're working in a rotational pasture situation)

I wish I had the room to pasture mine, but alas. That's why I fed the alfalfa cubes, and sometimes the hay too. Yes, they can lift the panels right out of the ground, been there done that one! That's when I went over to the hog panels, and put a T post about every 4 foot. I have heard of some folks saying that Vodka is supposed to make the meat really tender. Can you just see a bunch of soused sows running around??

Not to mention the ugly looks I would get coming out of the liquor store with 6 gallons of Vodka! The old church biddies would have a whoooole bunch to jabber about then!

 

[Cadeau]

I always went with either Yorkshires or Hampshires. Crosses of the two breeds works well too. Had one Duroc, didn't care for them.

We like Berkshire the best by FAR!
Sweet and juicy, needs no seasoning.

Second, would probably be Yorkshire or Blue Butt (Yorkshire x Hampshire)

We do have 1 Duroc x Yorkshire who was Grand Champion in 4-H for my stepdaughter - They make more meat, but it is not as sweet or juicy.

 

[Cadeau]

I wish I had the room to pasture mine, but alas. That's why I fed the alfalfa cubes, and sometimes the hay too. Yes, they can lift the panels right out of the ground, been there done that one! That's when I went over to the hog panels, and put a T post about every 4 foot. I have heard of some folks saying that Vodka is supposed to make the meat really tender. Can you just see a bunch of soused sows running around??

Not to mention the ugly looks I would get coming out of the liquor store with 6 gallons of Vodka! The old church biddies would have a whoooole bunch to jabber about then!

I'll have to tell my SOs cousin about the vodka - I'm sure he'll try it!