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Showing posts from November, 2018

Critical Specimens

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Amelia has a strong sense that if we have animals, they should be producing more animals.. She watches and wishes for her hens to go broody -- but they rarely do. She doesn’t ask for much, but she mentioned the word "incubator" on a regular basis.  And she is faithful to keep a calendar and watch our giant pig, JP, to keep track of her heat. But, we don’t have a male pig and we don’t have a hen that will brood or an adult rooster.  As the summer months were ending and school was beginning, we decided it was time to take action. Amelia informed me that it was time.  JP would be in heat in the next few days. Action was required and right now.  I called our friend Jim Elliot. We acquired JP from Jim and he used artificial insemination to produce piglets from giant JP, so he had wonderful advice on how to order semen from Bill in Iowa and how to make sure she was in heat. She’ll be grunting and make sure she is “standing”. “You won’t be able to push her over with a b