New piglets!

Down in West Devon we enjoyed a hot and sunny weekend, but the wind and rain has returned on Monday and it seemed as though the rest of the country was suffering a heat wave whilst we all splash around in wellies and rain coats!  Due to good luck and wise timing, our farm manager Malcolm managed to get the hay crop cut, dried and bailed in the sun before the rain set in on Sunday evening.

The cattle, sheep and pigs don’t seem to mind the weather too much and we’re hoping that the recent warm burst combined with the rain will encourage more grass growth, which has been behind expectation this summer.

Our latest litter of piglets has started to arrive with the first Meidam sow delivering 16 healthy babies over the weekend, we sadly lost 4 piglets from this large litter.  The heavy rain has meant that the litter is preferring to stay inside the pig arcs but we expect them to explore their world soon. This was the first litter produced by crossing our Large White boar with Meidam sows and we’re hoping for lots of long backed pigs in a few months to provide plenty of pork loin for our award winning organic bacon!  We’re expecting around 150 piglets before the autumn, and in our second full year of organic pig farming the breeding cycle is now organised into Spring and Autumn farrows producing around 300 piglets each year.

The spring lambs have been weaned and are now grazing in small juvenile flocks, while our ewes are moved onto rich grassland to stimulate the breeding cycle before our male ‘tups’ run with them again later this year.