If you are new to Raising a Farmer you may have noticed some pictures of a large pig roaming around our farm. His name is Hans and he is living his best life.
Hans is a fixture of our farm. He roams where he likes and when he was younger and a lot smaller he would walk Everett to the school bus, he just getting lazy now and only walks them on the first day of school.
The story of Hans. Hans started as a 4H Swine Market Project for Everett in 2018. For many years Everett had shown dairy animals at the Morrison County Fair. Some of these animals he would take year after year. Market animals are different. For market animals, every year you take a new animal because their purpose is for market (to eat). Everett was on the fence for a couple years about showing market animals. Everett bonds with his animals and showing market animals is different. I told him when he was ready we would get him a pig.
The spring of 2018 Everett was ready to show pigs. We had decided we would start with one and see how it goes. Everett and Vivian had decided to name him Hans, “Hans” because he is the bad guy from Frozen and we have since been reminded several times the bad guy from Die Hard. They had decided on a bad guy name thinking it would be ok in the end when the new market arrival would be in my freezer. When we picked up Hans the kids were reminded he was going to be in our freezer come fall. All summer the kids were reminded that Hans was going to be in our freezer. We had reminder conversations all summer Hans is a market animal, he is going to be in our freezer. I think you get the point: Hans was supposed to be in our freezer.
Hans taught Everett a lot about showing pigs, feeding pigs and patience that is needed with pigs. Every animal is completely different.
Fall came and we had some feed we wanted to get rid of that wasn’t good enough for our cows so we feed it to the pig. Hans got to stick around a little longer than intended. Winter came and I became really busy with my Morrison County Milk Project.
The kids and I were on our way out the door to deliver milk to one of the local schools when we saw that Hans was out of his pen. That winter we had so much snow and it was so so so cold. I knew he would stay close to the barn and nestle in the straw. I am not sure how or why we never put Hans back in his pen. He is now a permanent fixture of our farm.
Morrison County Fair 2019 we took him to the fair for a meet and greet in the Ag Learning Center. At that time he weighed 678 pounds. We weren’t 100% sure what he all eats. He will eat grass, hay, old silage what ever he can find around the yard. When we went to the fair I thought for sure 150 pounds of feed would be plenty for Everett’s two pigs he was showing and Hans. By the second day Everett came to me saying we were out of feed.
We had shirts made saying “I Love Hans” for at the 2019 Morrison County Fair. We gave them away as a prize for the Raising a Farmer Scavenger hunt and they were gone in about 6 hours!! Everyone loves Hans!
Hans has about doubled in size since then.
He loves the sun. He loves the snow. He likes long naps. Apples are his favorite. Gatorade and Pepsi are his drink of choice.
And we LOVE Hans!!
Here are some videos of Hans
Raising a Farmer 
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