Ready and waiting........

Lovely Hubby has worked SO hard over the weekend, and we are now officially ready and waiting for our new arrivals next week.

We have registered with the Rural Payments Agency, got our County Parish Holding Number and our Herd Number and notified the Animal Health people, so we are all legal and above board. We have had a good piggy vet recommended to us and I am going to contact them this week, so if we have any piggy emergencies they will know where we are.

Through these trees is the chicken pen and our house.

The first two pig pens are all finished. With the straw bales lying just inside the doors of the pig arks ready to be spread on the floor the morning we go to pick up Maud and Martha Middle White, and then next week when we go to pick up Betty Berkshire.

Once through the trees you are in the orchard and the first of the 3 new pig pens. Step through the trees inside the pen and you can see the field beyond. The fencing is as secure as possible with stock wire all around and barbed wire at the top and bottom, to discourage escape attempts. We are hoping not to have to use electric fencing but that may come in the future if needed.

Each pen is 12 metres square, with a large pig ark suitable for a mum and her babies, plenty of room to roam about, space for a mud wallow and a shady woody area for rooting about in and resting from the glare of the sun (or the wild winds of winter).

I am using today to check out pig food prices, but we have an offer of shared pig feed deliveries from our new piggy keeping friends (they have THE MOST GORGEOUS farm you can imagine, real Oxfordshire picture book stuff with animals mingling and running around happily together and 50 pigs!!). We bought 20 bales of straw off them yesterday and just clicked straight away.

So it's been a good weekend getting ready for our new aquisitions. Oooh......so exciting!!

Sue xx