Pigs.....In...Snow!!!

We had a white Christmas in Georgia!! This is the first time this has happened, in our area, since 1882. The pigs really enjoyed the snow. They spent hours rooting around. I thought for a minute that they were building a snow pig!!

Breeding hogs for sale

We are going to be selling some of our breeding stock. These are fine pigs that are very good producers, but, as we keep more of the cross breeds that we are producing, we need to let someone else experience the joy of owning these fine pigs.

Bubba, our full blood Large Black boar, is 2.5 years old and, well, large. He is gentle and friendly. He has produced many fine piglets for us and many of them have formed the base of our herd. There is simply too few breeding opportunities, for him, to justify keeping him, so, we are offering him to someone who would like to produce some fine piglets for meat production and breeding prospects.

We are also offering, for sale, two sows. Sow #1 is a 2 year old Yorkshire sow that is a piglet producing machine. She is currently bred to our full blood Mulefoot boar and is due to give birth in early February. Sow #22 is a 1 year old half Large Black, half Yorkshire sow. She is also bred to our Mulefoot boar and is due to give birth in early February. The reason for the sale of these two fine sows is that we have decided to base our commercial herd on the Berkshire sows.

Please contact us if you wish to discuss the pigs further.

We are adding a new breed to our commercial herd!!

We have recently placed a deposit on a Red Wattle boar piglet!!! If you find yourself asking "what in the world is a Red Wattle?", here is a link so that you can learn about the breed:

http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/redwattle.html

We chose this breed because it is known for foraging ability and good meat quality. It also is more heavily muscled than either the Large Black or Mulefoot and a leaner pig than the other two breeds. I believe that the three breeds will compliment each other well. I feel that he is a logical next step in our goal to produce the finest pastured pig possible.

Stay tuned for photos of our new potential herd sire. He will be here in early to mid February 2011.

New Piglet Policy at Doster's Heritage

Hello all,

Here at Doster's Heritage we are trying to produce cross bred meat pigs like no others available in the United States. We have and continue to travel the country to find rare breeds to use in our program. It is an expensive and time consuming procedure. With that said, we have decided that, in order to protect our bloodlines, we will no longer sell female or intact male piglets from our 2nd generation of breeding on. We will still sell piglets from F1 crosses from our Yorkshire and Berkshire sows as usual. We will also still sell Full blood Mulefoot piglets and we will sell castrated piglets from all of our bloodlines for those of you who want the best meat pigs available. We are going to keep all of the female piglets, from the 2nd cross on, and raise them to market size, and then we will decide if we will keep them as breeders, or, harvest them and offer the meat for sale.

Pig Bomb Imploded and left us puppies.

Well, this weekend was exciting. We sold all of the cross bred piglets that we needed to sell. We are keeping two Large Black X Berk gilts and one Mulefoot X Berk gilt. We will breed the two LB gilts to Cletus, our Mulefoot boar and we will breed the Mulefoot gilt to Bubba, our LB boar. We should have some wonderful meat pigs out of these crosses. In the next couple of years, we will look into getting another heritage breed boar. I don't know which breed for sure yet, but, I am thinking about getting a Hereford or Red Wattle boar.

We also had a litter of Catahoula pups born this weekend. Our female, Kitty, has 5 pups out of our red merle male, Lobo. 3 are black and tan, one is blue merle and one looks like she is going to be a patchwork.

Pig Bomb!!!

Hello all,

We have had 4 litters of pigs born in the last week. Our two American Mulefoot sows farrowed with 11 pigs total. Our two Berkshire sows farrowed with 18 piglets total. Our Berkshires had some interesting piglets. It turns out that one of the Berks was bred to our Large Black boar Bubba and the other to our American Mulefoot boar Cletus. The half Mulefoot piglets turned out to look a lot like a fullblood Mulefoot. They all have non-cloven hooves, but, with some of them, you can see a line where it looks like a split should have been. The Large Black crosses have me perplexed. The Berkshire female is fullblood registerable Berk and Bubba is a fullblood registerable Large Black, but, some of the cross breed piglets are spotted!! I don't get where the spots came from. None of the Mulefoot crosses have spots. Here is a photo of the different colors that we got in this litter. These piglets are all half Large Black.

It is hot on the farm!!

This weather is not good for the pregnant pigs. We are expecting 4 litters in the next couple of weeks and the sows are really feeling the heat. We are trying out best to keep the pigs as cool as possible. We are using fans and water to try and keep the pigs cool. Our two berkshires are really getting with the program. They will soak in the mud wallow then stand under the fan. The Mulefoot sows spend most of the day in a drainage ditch by the pond, the coolest place on the farm. I am not too worried about he Mulefoots. They were bred to deal with outdoor raising in very hot and humid climates,but, the Berkshires were bred to live indoors and produce piglets, it shows in the way they seem to stand up to the heat.

Bred Berkshire gilts

Hello,

These are our two Berkshire gilts that are bred and due to farrow in the next few days.(I know you can't see one of the gilts very well, but, they are almost identical in every way) There is some question as to which boar they are bred. I will explain. As we are getting more involved with the American Mulefoot Hogs, we have decided to sell Bubba, our Large Black boar. These gilts were running with our Mulefoot boar Cletus, but, because we are selling Bubba, we thought that it would be a good idea to breed as many of our non-mulefoot pigs as possible to him before he leaves, so, we moved the girls in with Bubba. From the looks of the gilts, it could be either boar who bred them. They seem to have been bred at about the time of the switch. Well, I, for one, am excited to see what the piglets look like. Will they be cloven hoofed with big floppy ears, or will they be mule-footed with short, prick ears? Time will tell.

Hello

Hello,

This is my first attempt at blogging. We raise American Mulefoot Hogs and some cross breeds that we will be using to produce pastured pork. We also raise Catahoula Leopard Dogs.