Friend or Foe on the Farm?

These are our first friends on the farm!  We had bought three female piglets and one male.  We sure didn't know what we were doing! Six months later we had three pregnant sows and a very unhappy boar!  In the dead of winter we began building seperate stalls for our expecting mama's when #1 (we learned not to name them), went into labor a few days too early!  The reason for seperating them is so that the other pigs don't trample on the babies and or the boar killing them. We seperated her by coaxing her with feed and tramatized her when we picked up her new borns to put in her new stall.  The unfortunate thing was we didn't have her gate door ready.  We had to nail her in shut! With the intention of coming out the next day to put hinges on her door.  In all my reading I read a heat lamp in the corner of her stall with a small barrier built in the corner so the piglets could get away from her when she moved around was haphazzardly installed.  Once we thought she was good to leave to finish delivering her babies we went inside to wind down the day.  Only twenty minutes later JJ screaming "FIRE!"  Jay jumped up without shoes and ran toward the barn.  Thank God only two days earlier the temperature had come above freezing so we had hooked up the hose to water the pigs!  I screamed for JJ to call 911 and I ran toward the barn to try to lift the garage door up to get the pigs out!  The smoke was overwhelming and Mama #1 was squealling and clawing trying to get out of her nailed in stall.  Jay was in the stall with her trying to kick the boards out as I was grabbing piglets and dropping them in a bucket and running them out of the barn into the garage.  Finally #1 clawed her way over the barrier and out the door she ran trying to run back into the barn to look for her babies!  The whole Farmington Fire company showed up to complete extinguishing the fire while most of the men just watched in amazement of the sow trying to finish delivering her babies on our garage floor and running around looking for all of her newbees!  She had a total of 8 piglets and 4 died in the fire.  #1 was the odd woman in the herd.  She was always having to fight for position as a piglet and it carried over into her adult life.  Once we seperated her from the other two sows they banned her from the herd for a long time.  She wasn't a very pleasant sow until later on I contributed to her survival methods.

Soon after #2 had her babies and the same day Pinky *ok we named two of them, had hers.  It was very exciting but very scary too.  These 100 lb animals can be very agressive when you mess with their babies. Cleaning their stalls was work.  Anyone that know me, knows that I probably made more work for myself and JJ then necessary.  We would feed the piglets and the sow and get inside their pens and pitch fork the manure out and shoveling wet straw over the pens into the wheel barriel out to the gardens.  I would push the straw way back and spray the floor with Shaklee Basic G and H!  I didn't want my pigs to live in filth!  What can I say, a bit over the top sometimes.   We learned that good old dirt was good for mama and babies!  So we would dig up dirt and shovel some in for them once a week.  Iron in the soil and the sand was good for their digestive system.  I didn't believe in medicated feed so we had to find ways for them to get properly nourished. 

Castration was another hurdle we had to face.  We learned that males needed to be castrated.  The earlier the better.  I called Department of Agriculture and found someone that came down for free and castrated all the males.  THAT WAS TRAMATIZING!  The woman tried to show us how to do it for next time but I couldn't do it!  Jay had no interest either.  From then on we just sold the males before they were 100lbs so the meat wouldn't sour when they were butchered.

Once the piglets were old enough to mingle with the herd we started with number ones babies and her first then we released the other two and their babies.  It was so interesting to see them unite and retaliate!  Oreo (the bore) was super excited to see his women again, almost too excited.  At first I thought we made a mistake!  He was super aggressive mounting and biting the sow!  Then something interesting happened.  The two sows that had their babies last wouldn't let #1 sow and her 3 babies in the barn!  It was sooo sad.  To make things worse that night a Nor'easter blew in!  I was out in that mess building a shelter in the corner of the pasture up against the barn to shield them from some of the storm!  I pulled a piece of plywood from the tractor shed and laid it down in the corner on top of the mud.  Then I laid straw down and then took another piece of plywood and wedged it between the fence and a steel drum to use as a roof.  People think pigs are dumb but those pigs knew what I was doing and took no time to seek shelter in the lientoo!  It took 3 days for the herd to accept them as part of their family.  Even the piglets were brutle to the little outsiders!

Rounding up piglets for sale was also a teaching lesson.  Snatching one you better be quicker and stronger than mama if you don't want to be bitten!  Or better yet, just coax them with a bucket of feed and be calm there usually is no problem until baby realizes mama is on the other side of the gate!  Heart breaking.  I never did get use to this. The day someone would come by to pick one up for the market or just a buyer my stomach would be in knots.  The first pig we sold JJ was not prepared to let it go!  My son tried so hard to behave bravely and strongly but he finally broke down and cried!  I cried too.  I learned that when the butcher came to pick up one for market I didn't even go out.  Of course anytime they came it was a very calm experience because they knew how to get a pig in the trailer without tramatizing it!  Just a bucket of feed and maybe a board to guide it along.

I never will forget the few times our lovely pigs found a weak board in the fence and push it out and run rampit on the farm and then into the neighbors flower beds and dog pens for their food!  How embarrassing!  It took us  a few times of many of us exausted with boards herding them home.  If we had only knew that feed in a bucket is all that it would take to coax them home! Looks pretty funny with our tractor out on the road and someone on the back with feed in a bucket and pigs following behind!

#1 had another litter in the fall.  I felt sorry for her since she had such a rough time of it all her life.  This time it was smoother and we kept her babies longer.  We finally decided that it was costing us more to feed her than it was worth it as she was now over 200lbs.  So we had the butcher pick her up one morning.  Only to hear from our daughter at school telling us that she thought our sow was running around the school premises!  You see the butcher was located across the street from the school and #1 wasn't liking her new accomodations and she busted out the side of the barn they had her in!  She made the new that night!  See butchers on school property with shot guns don't go over too well in these days!  People just don't understand shot guns stopping a sow from running into open fields to her getaway isn't the same as a disgruntled student looking to end his or others lives.  Later all charges were dropped on our poor butcher!    #1 came into the world with stories to tell and left this world with stories to tell.  Adventures .... more to tell later.

Tootie and Aflac

They look soo cute don't they.... then they grew up!

 One day Jay and Matt decided to check out Dill's Auction.  My LAST words were, " Don't bring home anything breathing!"

Later that day Jay comes in the door with a cardboard box, and says, "Hold your breath!"  I couldn't believe he didn't listen to me!  Inside there was the cutest two Toulouse Geese I ever saw! (Is there a such thing as ugly gosslings?)  

As much as I was annoyed that he brought something else home to take care of I have this weakness or shall I say curse to take in animals.  We took them into the hen house and set them up in there own pen.  They started out like dogs.  They came out in the morning and ran around the farm grazing all day and in the evening I would feed them and give them fresh water and they would woddle back to their pen for the night.  It was a ritual.  Then once they where all feathered out I forgot to pen them up one night and that was it for going inside their pen again.  They learned to come into the hen house and chill for the night but didn't need to be penned up.  We realized that a body of water would have been good for them so we bought a kiddy pool for them and built a ramp for them to climb in and out of the pool.  They loved it... silly as it looked to see them diving in a foot and a half of water!  Then my husband and friend decided that we needed a pond!  I couldn't believe it two days later our friend had brought over his backhoe and dug to China I thought (looking for a spring).  To no avail, no spring, just a large hole!  I should have gone with my instinct and told them to forget the whole idea.  The hole sat for a whole year with mounds of dirt everywhere!  What an eye soar.  It was nice when we got a nice rain!  The geese just made the water green with their messy poop!  You think they could not poop in the water at least.  Nooo they had to poop in the water and everywhere else!  All over the driveway and the sidewalks, the steps and why not in the yard too!  But hey they kept the slugs away!  They also love to eat my tomatoes!  Those crazy fowl would pull a tomatoe off the vine throw it up in the air and catch it and eat just half the tomatoe and move on to the next.  When they were little they loved to be held and cuddled, but as they got older they didn't even like to get close to you unless it was to sneak up on you and bite you in the rear!  I read that the reason they appear to be aggressive is because they are really socializing with you!  You see, if you back down from them they have bragging rights!  If you don't back down then they are looked at as if they lost the greeting!  Bizzar!  So I learned to wave my hands and make loud noises at them when they came charging at me.  I never backed down!  They left me alone.  Now poor Joy on the other hand, she got slapped by Aflac on more than one occasion.  Those geese would wait for her to come out of the hen house after she would collect the eggs, and chase her down if they could!