I love springtime! We start getting a glimps of summer. The flowers start blooming and their are babies everywhere espeshally here on the farm. The babies are the best part!! However their is also the " buisness" part of spring as well. Every spring we go threw and evaluate our herd of pigs. Part of that is deciding who goes and who stays. We will usually give the first time moms another year and another litter r if they had a difficult birth before we decide if they are worth keeping around or not. But the hardest part is deciding when the old sows need to go. Their is really only one way to get rid of an unproductive sow and that is selling them for sausage. I truly hate the job of deciding!! This year we decided petunia needed to go as she has had 1 litter in 2 years. I was sad over her leaving even if she was a little prickly at times! Delilah is the one who is really the heartbreaker for me though! Her and daisy were our very first two pigs. The ones that's started it all so to speak. She has only had 1 litter ever in the past 4 years while her sister daisy easily produces 2 litters a year. Delilah is easily 1200 lbs so needless to say she eats a lot and well Adam said I can only keep one of our old sows and that's tulip my other favorite Delilah is such a love! She will choose a belly rub over food and will come lay beside you In The pasture if you are sitting their.shes never mean tempered she just always wants loves.. Monday the butcher comes for her and I will admit I bawl every time I think about it! I made sure I didn't have to be home when he comes. Stuff likes this makes me want to not have a pig farm because it hurts so much to make these choices. But if I kept them all I wouldn't be able to afford to feed them or bring in pigs that will produce. Their have been a lot of changes with the herd and more are coming. Two months ago we had to put down our old Berkshire boar as he could no longer maintain a healthy weight and was weak In his old age of 8 or 9. luckly we had seen it coming so had a replacement already lined up. Next month happy goes down the road ( selling him) to bring in a younger boar.