Happy Harvest Blog
Pig Innovations
What’s going on here?
Is that what I think it is?
Yep.
Pigs….
All of them are different!
This is the first one who’s ever thought that …
The least eventful arrival of piglets event, ever.
It was kind of a long car ride, but they were almost worryingly quiet, and hardly stinky either. We’re home! Yeah, yeah. Not excited. I wheelbarrowed their kennel over to the new home, and they rode that journey like champs, sitting up, their sniffers working overtime. Just as fast as they could, smelling everything about the new environment. The wet, sprouting field, the damp forest. Me. SNIFFSNIFFSNIFFSNIFFSNIFF!
Ready for piglets
The piglet yard is all set up and ready to go. Right by the house, so I can keep an eye on them. This is from the porch. I’ve never put the pigs this close. They come tomorrow. I am overwhelmed with my own cleverness here, designing this for a water trough they can’t flip over. That means I’ll probably be lucky to get two weeks before they conquer it. It’s always unwise to think you’ve outsmarted a pig.
No more pigs
The pigs have ceased to be. As always, they had a good, lazy, romping life, with mud up to their eyes most days and loads of naps. I'm not going to miss this pair, though. They were extra sneaky and cunning, and developed a taste for illicit exploring. Now I'll be able to leave home again.
Sun day
The sun came out and dried up all the rain. Not all - there was a lot of rain. And more wind. This morning, the pig house was upside down. No pigs. That's never happened before (the pig house flipped, certainly not absent pigs). I can picture them bolting out of there as their house lifted off of them. Pigs are easygoing, pleasant, optimistic creatures though, so they had no worries about settling back in after breakfast. I had a good time in the greenhouse, cleaning up, untying strings.
Post-Halloween pigs
The pigs are enjoying jack-o-lantern guts, to put it mildly. I've got a few days worth of meal-enhancements from a carving party. I mix the pulp in with their pellets, and nothing budges them from their bowls when they've got pumpkin. I moved their fence around two trees, taking an entire half of it down, and there was not a flicker of interest. No investigating. Whatchu doin'? Nothing. (Good to know).
All in!
What a load off my mind! Everyone is in. I thought it might all be too crowded for the numbers I have now, but it's ok. It's sloppy and slapdash right now, but it will work out. There's plenty of room for the coops, and a pool, and more. The guineas are being very tolerant about this mass invasion. They very much like to sit up on top of Silkieland. Perhaps we'll poop on you. I think they're so cute. They treat the chickens more like pets they're fond of, than equals.
Mass escape
We've had a lot of rain in a week and a bit. The ground is soft and muddy everywhere, and that makes the electric fence easy to knock over. The pigs escaped after their supper yesterday, an hour before dark. I thought I heard them snorting around in the woods by the house, and I assumed that they would be bedding down and we'd see them in the morning. Boy was I wrong.
pasture pigs
The wild birds are well fed. They've been cleaning out my crop of sunflowers. From full to this, all in four days. I grew them for them, but I hoped to ration them out a little better, and for my chickens to get some. Makes me want to grow a field of them, but then the ravens will come and really clean them out. The pigs are moved again, now in the "pasture", which is much easier to move the fence through. Of course, they are hiding.
Epic pig move
The pigs got another big move yesterday. And they're acting like they did all the work. The space they have with the two strands of fence is vast (not literally, but it seems pretty vast, and it's plenty big enough for them to get totally concealed). I walk around looking for them and it's like Wild Safari. Can you see them? Is that something moving over there? Well, there's a spot where pigs have been.I'm not moving. Maybe my eyelid. One lazy pig. Spot the pig? The other two are in there.
Pig bribery
I've got some rowdy pigs. Specifically, the female. She's a bit of a loner, happy to be apart from the boys some of the time, and she doesn't respect the fence. She knows how to get under it, rooting under a post (the bottom strand isn't electrified), and then tossing it up, where it will flop down on her back and she can charge underneath, getting only a modest shock on her thick back. I haven't seen her do this all the way through, but I've seen her start into the process very deliberately.
Two tone pigs
The pigs were lying in the mud on one side only, so they (two of them) are browned right down the middle like mimes. They look fully mudded, but they're not. There's the pink side! Yesterday they liberated themselves. I came home, no pigs, and did my usual march all over all the places they could get themselves in trouble with a pail in hand, but I couldn't find any trace of them. It was too late to rouse them.
Full mudface
Finally some rain! The pigs, who are usually muddy to the eyes, are today muddy to the ears. They look funny, with their eyes cleanish in the full muddy cones of their faces. By afternoon they had gleefully mudded the whole rest of their bodies until they had single cleanish strips only along their spines. One of the pigs has a predilection for bringing one or more of their rubber bowls into their house. Sometimes all three are in there, sometimes stacked.
PIGS FIRST MOVE
(David Attenborough voice) After the new enclosure has been prepared for these lucky piglets, the fence is parted, allowing access to the abundant unspoiled greenery this species thrives upon. But how long will it take them to discover their new freedom? Their attendant retrieves the food bowls they are familiar with and places them in plain view just beyond the fence opening, filling them with fresh food. The young pigs observe these proceedings with interest but from a distance.
Furtive forest piglets
Three little pigs. They are not tame at all. They are wild animals, free and independent. They observe from a distance. It's quite nice to not be leaned on and snouted every time you go in their fence, but it will also be nice to play with them and scratch them, someday. They are curious. They approach, sniffing. But then one snorts and they all stampede off! Runaway!
Three little pigs
As usual, the new piglets are super shy. She threw me over her shoulder, and I won't forget. I peed on him, hee hee. They snort and dash away to the farthest part of their yard when you even get close. This is kind of a nice stage when you can stay clean going in to feed them. In a month or two they'll be nosing my pant legs and jostling me at the trough. They've been working, though. They were here for minutes before they had their faces in the dirt, and dug up an impressive swath of it in their first hour.
Piglets and chicks.
We got the pigs! Three little piglets. They are very pink, but they are supposed to be sired by a full black Berkshire. It seems they take after their mother. We've finally sorted out our pig transport, after trying dog crates and the back of the car. That extra chickery I made came in, secured with a pallet, and covered with a piece of canvas (becoming as useful and ubiquitous around here as baling twine and wire), so the piglets don't get a sunburn or heatstroke. Our first piglets came in with sunburn and possibly heatstroke, but recovered.
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