I almost put this in the rants section. Here is an update. Our slaughter date came a week ago. We had to deliver them live. I tried to do the sensible thing and start feeding them in the trailer 4 or 5 days out. Well they never did go into the trailer. We were feeding them minimally in the pen because they were really hungry. In retrospect we did not have any window or natural light in the front of the trailer.
We got the smaller pig in and the bigger one just was not cooperating. She was really stressed and we were tired. So we took we took the first one to the butcher. We came back and tried again and it was just all bad. She tore up a hog panel and a gate. We decided to just call it a day. It seemed the pig would have a heart attack or someone was going to get hurt. The butcher was great and gave us a date the following week.
This time I cut a window in the front and was going to tie her to the tractor and pull her in if needed. We had some big ole boy neighbors help this time. She slipped out on the first attempt and I was ready to just give up. The guys decided to try one more time and got her in. By the way the little one was 260 lbs hanging. This one was even bigger, like 350lbs. Many lessons learned but so glad it is done. We will rework our pig pen. It was originally for a mini donkey. Getting an uncooperative animal out was never a consideration. Also I made some mods to the trailer and may get a livestock trailer. Lastly we need to make an appointment with the butcher as soon as we get piglets so they aren't so big. The food dish is the bottom of a 55 gallon barrel.
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