Do you remember when I announced (last December 26th) that I had finally given up on Penny ever getting pregnant and decided it was time to take her to the sale and “move on” since she wasn’t meaningfully sustaining the farm in any way?
I didn’t at the time know her actual weight and was worried about luring a pig that big into my two-horse trailer. The second you get a hog that big upset, many things can go wrong. And get destroyed.
I was guessing she was over 500 lbs for sure. Big enough to do some serious damage to a human or a trailer. Hell, I have seen that pig lift a metal horse panel and toss it into the air like it was a cardboard box – on more than one occasion… And don’t get me started on what she did to a stall once.
She’s a tall pig too. If she’d let me sit on her back, which she’d never, my feet would not come close to touching the ground.
I bought Penny two years ago this winter. She was supposed to get pregnant when I found a boar for her, in order to bring in extra cash and pay for my butchering and hog raising expenses for the farm.
One sow could easily birth a dozen or more piglets each year, which would cover the cost of two pigs for my own freezer. All this sounded like a fabulous idea to me. Except Penny never got pregnant. She did get bigger and bigger though. To the point she was just a little dangerous to move around because of her pushy attitude.
What if she had gotten pregnant? I would have worked around the attitude and kept her. But she didn’t and it was time to move on.
I backed the trailer up to the front barn entrance. Then I sliced up a couple of apples and sweet-talked her down the barn aisle and up to the trailer door. She walked her massive self slowly down the aisle, knowing something was different but not sure what. She sniffed around, looked for any signs of danger, then decided apples were like crack and she really wanted more apples and then walked right into the trailer. I did the happiest, happy jig – we were off to the sale!
Hog prices are so-so at the moment, but she still managed to pull in $299.00 for the farm’s bank account. This money will more than cover the cost of butchering another pig I’m taking to be processed in February, so I’m satisfied enough. And whatever is left over will then go toward buying another feeder piglet to raise for another 6-7 months to add to the freezer.
It amazes me that anyone would want to buy a hog that size to begin with. That’s a LOT of sausage. Better have a LOT of freezer space. Oh.….you were wondering how much she actually weighed in at the sale weren’t you? Well I’ll let you all make your guesses and I then I’ll post the actual scale weight on Thursday. I’ll give you a hint – it’s just over five times my actual weight. And I’m five feet, seven inches tall. Let’s see who’s guess comes closest to the truth of the scale. I’m also going to talk about my own weight on Thursday and what I plan on doing about it…
So raise your glass with me to Penny… I thank her for the privilege of being able to raise her, and for two years of contributing not much of anything but her “charming” personality to the farm. Oh and poop. There was poop. She contributed a lot of that stuff for the garden. So technically she wasn’t a total free-loader. ~A
