Visiting the Pigs - T minus 19 days

Pigs rooting for spent grain.

A lot of home brewers use their spent grain as compost for their vegetable gardens, to bake with, or sometimes, depending where they live, they'll give it away to local farmer to supplement livestock feed.  I texted David and let him know I was planning to come by with a few pounds of spent grain and wanted to feed it to our pigs, if it was okay - he said it was.

His text ended with, "I'd be interested in your thoughts on the weight."

So, off we went to Public House Produce to check on the swine.  I knew I had a treat for them in the moist, sweet, cracked barley that is left after the mash.  They saw me drive up, and moved to the corner of the pasture where I would be coming from.

I walked up greeting them and they barked a little, I think because they realized at last that I wasn't David.  I held my buckets up close to the fence so they could get a whiff - and they were definitely interested.  I wanted to get them around to the other side of the pasture so I could work with the light to take a few photos to share, and they followed me around.

Fine swine.

When I dumped the grain out, they weren't sure about the fast movements I made, so they balked.  Soon enough they figured it out, and there was a smacking good time going on.  The sweets provoked a few tussles as well - so I was careful to dump the second bucket a little farther away and in two batches to give them all some room.

Once I reported back to David that they seemed to enjoy the treat, he asked again about the weight.  I told him I thought 220-230 pounds - these guys are pretty compact and muscular, it seemed to me.

Then he told me that Kevin Bacon is the smallest at 250 pounds (she is second from right in the first photos), and that the durocs (the two brown ones) are topping out at around 300 pounds!

Big pigs!

That's going to make for a tiring first day in a couple of weeks!