[Daisys Mum]

Huh!! If my saddlebacks escape again I won't need a weightape they will be in the freezer, they have just led me a merry dance after lifting off their gate.

[rudolph76]

[size=78%]I am confused. [/size] [/size][size=78%]  Are you saying that you have two pigs from the same litter, and one is a Saddleback, the other a Pietrain?[/size]

The are from a pietrain/saddleback cross, one is identical to a saddleback whilst the other is a pietrain looky-likely.

[hughesy]

Oh, so easy to put a tape measure around a pig.....!!

As with most things if you do it while they're eating they won't take much notice.

[Daisys Mum]

My weightape arrived today so will have a go at tea time with the bigger of the Saddlebacks, I have 4 from the same litter and there is 1 monster although he is not at all fat 1 middle sized and 2 a bit smaller which is quite good as it means that I can send them off 2 at a time. I also have 2 middle whites which sould be ready about 4 weeks after the second lot of Saddlebacks. The man that I got the middle whites from said to feed them a bit less as they were more prone to getting fat, they will be 20weeks old on Monday and I was thinking of keeping them on 4 lb each per day. They look good to me can just feel ribs and backbone.

[Tamsaddle]

Wayfarer - we aim now for 15 mm back fat, if you achieve that there is a 1/2 to 3/4 inch layer of fat on the fattiest pieces of loin and seems just right;  the lowest we have ever got to is 9 mm.    Slowly over the years we are getting there, mainly by keeping their regular feed low from 2.5 months old, building up to a max of 1.85 kg/day (= 4 lbs) by 4 months of age until slaughter.    I don't think last minute diets work at all, as the fat builds up throughout their life. 
We have always found it hugely difficult to judge beforehand just how fat they are going to turn out.   All our pigs seemed to us to be quite slim when we sent them off, then you get back a slaughter report with anything between 25 to 35 mm of fat, which can be very off-putting as there seems to be more white than red and you have to trim masses of excess fat off.    Probably this level of fat was acceptable a century ago, but everyone we sell to nowadays wants relatively lean meat, including rare breed pork meat.  We have always found our saddlebacks produce less fat than the tamworths, fed exactly the same rations over the same time period, but I have no idea about pietrains at all.