When Babies Grow Up ...

Someone asked me the other day when I breed my sows.

However, this is not a simple question, and nor does it have a simple answer. The simplest I can get is this:

• 30 ounces of weight
• 3 months of age

Now let me clarify - they need to be both to be bred. If I have a 28 ounce 3 month old, she gets to play awhile longer. If I have a 28 ounce five month old, she gets to play awhile longer, too.

I honestly don't know any other breeders who have a practice of letting sows get so big before breeding them, but I've never had a problem with it, and I feel like this is how they grow to be the big 2.5 pound senior sows I have.

Exceptions to the rule? If they hit six months and aren't 30 ounces, if they are 27-28 I'll throw them in, hoping they'll grow after they litter. Any less than that and they find a pet home. I have little tolerance for non-growing pigs, sows or boars. I do find that sows will often gain six-eight ounces of adult weight after they deliver their 2nd litter.

And breaks? I don't backbreed (unless the sow's name is Maggie and she takes six months to breed whether you attempt to backbreed or not, so she doesn't really count). I try to give them four weeks off after weaning, but if they start to look like a bucket 'o lard, they go back in breeding. My Katie is one of those sows who could nurse six babies and still have ten-mile-wide shoulders and still weigh her standard 42 ounces. She does not know that it is standard to lose condition (I like that!). Actually, she had a litter in mid-December and I tried my darndest to leave her out, but after she'd had 3 weeks of rest she decided herself that she was going to try to kill the rest of the sows in her cage, so she got thrown in with Gage. Yeah, she was starting to get tubby anyway.

So there's the semi-standard answer.