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 …
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.
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.
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.
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!
Almost bacon
They seem so big! All jowlly and robust. They never outgrew a good sprint, and they love the daily wallow - I pour a bucket of water over them every afternoon, and they'll leave behind food at the sound of me pouring out some water - they run to me and flop down in the puddle. But what's this in the background? Oh, just the resident chickens.
Gotcha, pigs!
The night was stormy, a mini-blizzard. In the dead dark and strong wind, we went outside and wrestled the fence into place and plugged it in, then extracted the so-very-successful two-strand, in a big snarl, naturally. The pigs were willfully asleep. There was shouting, yet they refused to wake up. It was cold outside, they weren't budging from the hay nest for nothing.
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
Bite size.
