When Pigs Fly...For the Fun of It!

We keep our boars in very stout pens. The pens are surrounded by tight, woven wire and include a hot wire that runs around the bottom and top of each pen - including the gates. Imagine our surprise when, this very morning, a two-year old gilt from another pen was found inside the pen with our young boar, Sam Adams. How she got there, we do not know. There were no signs of forced entry. The fences and hot wires were intact and without damage - yet there she was in all her glory. We can only conclude that pigs do indeed fly - for fly she certainly must have done.

I kept this gilt to butcher for our family, but she has been maturing so nicely that when her "time" came last fall, I held her over and began to consider breeding her to - you guessed it - Sam Adams! She is not a large gilt, but like her mother, she has tremendous length and beautiful width throughout. Apparently, she had waited for me to decide on her fate quite long enough and simply made the decision for herself.

Now, however, she needs a name. We name all our breeder hogs after authors and, for a moment, I worried that I wouldn't be able to come up with an female author who was also an aviator.

I needn't have been concerned. Apparently, the famous female pilot, Amelia Earhart, was also an author. Given this gilt's proclivity for mysterious aerial maneuvers, we have named the gilt "Amelia Earhart."

This will be the first litter that the handsome, young Sam has ever produced.

Piglets are expected on August 22, 2018.