More Little Piggies

Para and Cricket, our two large white but not piglets were growing well.  They both seemed to be rather daft but Para more so.  Cricket was clearly the dominant one but Para seemed not to mind.

Para and Cricket.

I had someone tell me that I needed to be out with my sunscreen, sunblocking my pigs.  I was skeptical.  They assured me that this is what you have to do with pigs.  I drive past a pig farm at least once a week, I somehow can’t see the farmer out there rubbing his SPF 30+ over his hundreds of sows that are larger than he is.  The friend that we got these two from said that her stepfather sprays used engine oil over his pigs as sunblock.  That was verified by others.  It put me off ever buying supermarket pork again.  I won’t put baby oil on my kids because it’s made from petroleum products, why would I feed it to them?

Another friend grew up on a pig farm.  Her father never did any of these things.  He just made sure that they had shade if they wanted to use it.

A wallow is not just fun for pigs, the mud that they coat themselves in works as a sunblock.  It’s a natural way that pigs do for themselves and they only seem to do it when it’s sunny and they’re in danger of getting burnt.  Well, except for Para.  Para was daft.  He had a lovely nature but was daft.  He wouldn’t roll or play in the wallow and was always dry-skinned, peeling and sunburnt.

I was still determined to have a breeding pair so I started looking for a sow.  I’d decided to keep Para for a boar because he was the nicer natured of the two and would be more manageable when they got big.  Cricket was slated for homekill in four months time. 

Cricket started biting.  It wasn’t vicious, it was more like puppy type behaviour.  I was cleaning up the poo out of their run and he kept nudging me with his nose.  What you doing? Play with me. I’d give him a scratch and carry on, so he bit me on the elbow.  That was blindingly painful, he got me right on the bones that stick out when your elbow is bent.  He bit Miss Fifteen when she was feeding them.  I banned Miss Six from the pigpen.  While he didn’t seem to be nasty, it would still be potentially nasty for her.  If he bit a finger or hand, she’d probably lose it.

In the way of small children, she didn’t listen and got a nasty bite on the thigh. 

I found a Kune Kune sow that was about 3 months old for $50.  Miss Fifteen who had decided the pigs were hers, named her Darla after her boyfriend’s mother (long story).  Darla is a lovely black and white with the tassels that apparently mark her as pure Kune.

We all became a bit afraid of Cricket.  I stopped feeding them in their trough and would just dump the bucket of scraps over the fence.  I would wait until they were eating to sneak around and top up their water every second or third day.

Cricket

One day, I noticed while I was feeding them, that Para hadn’t come running when I called.  I fed the other two and went looking for him.  He was dead in their little house.  Completely cold.  When Hubby came home, he buried him for us.  We weren’t sure why he had died, Hubby said there wasn’t a mark on him but he did notice yellow froth dried around his mouth.  That suggested poisoning to me.  But poisoned by what?

I had a close look around their run and spotted something I hadn’t seen before.  A three foot high Elder tree that had sprung up hidden in the macrocarpa hedge.  With elderberries on it.  Well, they’d do it.  The berries are poisonous until cooked or brewed.

It seemed for all our best laid plans, we might have to keep Cricket if we wanted to breed.  He was certainly trying to do the business, but Darla didn’t seem to be having any of that, not that we saw anyway - she’d lie down when he tried to cover her.

Cricket with Darla when we first got her.

I spent a week picking grapes at a local vineyard and met a local guy who also had pigs.  He wanted an unrelated boar for his sows and we discussed doing a boar swap - that suited me, Cricket was getting to be quite nasty.  I just had to wait for his piglets to get big enough to be weaned.  Another delay, but the results would be worth it.

Then I was feeding the pigs one day and Cricket attacked Darla.  He bit her on the back of her head.  She staggered away, sat down and had a seizure.  I thought I was watching my lovely little sow die.  I rang Hubby in tears.  Then I rang the homekill guy.  He was probably not going to be able to make it for about a week.  I knew that was probably the best I’d get and resolved to try and separate them.

That was a lesson in frustration.  Three hours and I couldn’t get them apart to move her elsewhere.  She was terrified of us all for some reason and when they weren’t eating Cricket was very nice to her.  We were all afraid of him too which didn’t help.

Since the weather was still warm, I stopped feeding them.  There was plenty of grass and he didn’t attack her over grass.  I beat myself up a lot over the whole thing.

The homekill guy rang the next day, he was able to come and do it tomorrow afternoon now, was this okay?  Was it okay?! It was fantastic.

When he was here, he watched Darla for a while.  “She’s blind as a bat mate, should I take her too?”  I watched her run into a fence and saw what he meant.  “Give me a week or so and let me see if she comes right.”  He was dubious but let it pass.

It was heartbreaking.  My sweet natured little sow was terrified of me and of everything.  She’d run into things as she was running away from me.  I wondered if I’d done the right thing.  Within two days however, she was mostly back to herself.  As the swelling went down, her sight returned and she’s back to the sweet pig that I bought months ago.

I waited for four months to see if she was pregnant, but that came and went with no additions to the pig run.  I’ll have to get a boar in for her.  I’ve been advised that Cricket’s behaviour was quite normal, that this is what happens when you keep boars and sows together.  I’ll get another sow for company for her though.

As for Cricket, well, it was nice to take a bite out of him for a change.

Weeds Worth Keeping

Most of the time when we weed our gardens, the presence of these invasive plants is a source of great frustration.  They do not grow to our prescribed ideas of how a garden should be and can spread out very quickly and thoroughly.

Here are a few reasons to give some of them a stay of execution.  They can be kept contained in smaller amounts or keeping them in pots might keep a few of them under control.

Correct identification of these plants is essential.  There are many similar plants that are often called by the wrong names.  Several of them are toxic.  If you’re not certain, don’t use it.

Photo credit - Jan Macario

Chickweed (Stellaria media)

Not only is chickweed a favourite snack for chickens and other birds, it is tasty and nutritious for us as well.  Chickweed can be used in a salad or used with or in place of basil in a pesto.

Fresh Chickweed as a tea will cleanse the system, relieve tiredness and cystitis.

Added to a bath, chickweed soothes irritating skin rashes and chickenpox.

Chickweed is also great in creams to relieve itching, draw insect stings and splinters and for healing burns and scalds.

© Copyright Bob Embleton and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Cleavers (Galium aparine)

Cleavers, also known as bidibids drive everyone crazy with it’s sticky seed pods that get everywhere and can be difficult to remove from pet’s fur and clothing.

Cleavers makes a wonderful tonic and can be boiled up to make a simple deodorant spray.

Liquidize or pulp the fresh plant and drink the juice as a diuretic and lymphatic cleanser for glandular fever, tonsillitis and prostate disorders.

A tea can be used as a cooling drink in a fever and to relieve urinary problems.  A compress soaked in the cooled tea can be used for burns, grazes, ulcers and other skin inflammations.

In a cream, cleavers relieves psoriasis.

Photo Credit - Jan Macario

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

 Dandelion leaves are rich in potassium, iron, high in vitamins A, B, C, D and other minerals. Young fresh dandelion leaves make very healthy greens with or in place of spinach and the roots can be dried, ground and used in place of coffee or as a mild laxative.

Liquidize the leaves and drink the juice (up to 20ml 3x daily) as a diuretic.

The milk from the flower stems can be painted on children’s fingernails to stop thumb-sucking and nail-biting.

Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica)

Photo Credit - soil.net

Nettles are a rich source of many essential vitamins and minerals, and like Dandelion, can be cooked with or in place of spinach.  Nettle soup, made with potato and garlic is delicious although from experience, I recommend finely chopping the stems otherwise they leave long unpleasant stringy bits in your soup.

When picking nettles, I find that below the surface of the soil there is no sting, so I pull them up by the roots.  Otherwise, if you can cut them and drop them into a basket or onto a cloth, then leave them to sit for about half an hour, the sting fades with wilting.  Cooking them removes the sting altogether.

Somewhere I also have a recipe for Nettle beer - also supposed to be good for your hair although I've never tried making or using it.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

Photo Credit - Jan Macario

Yarrow is a natural astringent.  A tea can be used to reduce fevers and for digestive problems.  As an external wash, the tea will help improve eczema.  Be careful though, in rare cases, there may be an allergic skin reaction and yarrow should be avoided in pregnancy.

It’s presence in compost helps break down the original material quickly.  Any livestock you may have also love yarrow and it’s beneficial for them.

Invasion of the Bulls

There is a saying - Good fences make good neighbours - this is more true in a rural setting.  There is nothing worse than having the neighbours livestock turn up in your paddocks.  There can be any number of reasons why this can be a problem.  The fenceline is the responsibility of both sides, but I’m told that when you have stock in a paddock, it’s up to you to ensure that they stay there.  So if they end up at the neighbours, you’re the one who has to sort it out and pay for any damage.

This happened to us just as I got a bull in for my two heifers.  I’d been thinking and talking about it.  My Dad had been out and seen my girls, but he didn’t think they were ready for it.  He was raised on a dairy farm that ran Jersey cows though and they’re about twice the size of the average dexter.  I heard all sorts of advice about the weight a heifer is supposed to be before she’s ready, but again, that was advice for larger breeds - I couldn’t see my girls ever reaching 280kg.  They let me know by their behaviour.

You see, Patsy and Eddie started jumping fences.  Fortunately, Eddie jumped the fence to the wonderful neighbours and ran around in a paddock with his heifers for a week.  Patsy, after bellowing angrily at her sister for 3 days, decided she wasn’t going to be outdone and jumped the fence in the other direction.  Toward all the ugly big jersey bulls.  We got them both contained fairly quickly into deer-fenced paddocks.  Much to their disgust.

I heard about this bull from a lady I was buying bobby calves from.  The breeder who owns the bull has something like 9 pedigree dexter bulls that she is happy to loan out for free, you just organise the transport yourself and you pick him up from whoever has him currently.  She likes him to stay with each person for 7 weeks, which gives him at least 2 attempts to do his job with your ladies.

The day I got him, he was a bit stroppy after being in the horse float for an hour and a half, so I kept him next to but separate from my girls for a couple of hours.  But within seconds of being in the same paddock, he was on one of them and had done the job right in front of me (and my then 6 year old daughter).

The trouble came two weeks later.  I found the neighbours bulls had broken through and were in our big paddock.  I hastily ran an electric fence across to stop them from coming up to the house and out on the road, before ringing the neighbour.  The neighbour leases his land to another neighbour who in turn leases it to a local stock agent.  He was going to ring the stock agent and get it sorted for me.  Two days later, I couldn’t see any of the bulls, so I made the assumption that they’d gone back and it had been taken care of.  Turns out they’d gone down our gully and cleaned up all the fallen plums.

© Copyright Andy F and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Just two or three days later, I got up to hear the most dreadful racket coming from my back paddock.  I was used to hearing the bulls bellow at each other, just not from that direction.  When I looked, I found that they were in my paddocks, lined up against the fence to the paddock where my girls were entertaining their guest.  Well, they were supposed to be entertaining their guest.  Campbell was too busy bellowing at the line up and they were bellowing back.  By this time, the bulls had been changed from the big ugly jersey brutes that had been there, now there was a mix of young bulls. I could identify herefords and fresians, but there were also some mostly black with the odd white patch that I’m guessing were crossbreeds of some sort.

I thought my lot were safe, but rang the neighbour again and told him what was going on.  He was on holiday in the Coromandel so too far removed to do much, but promised to ring the neighbour he leased the land to and get it sorted.  Great.  Two hours later, I was greeting a visitor that Hubby was also home from work to see and we were looking at the bulls lined up against the fence when one managed to lift the gate separating them off it’s hinges and suddenly my girls and borrowed bull were running loose with 6 other bulls.

Hubby started into the paddock saying “We’ve got to separate them.”  I looked at the bulls jumping on each other and one who jumped on one of my girls, not that she stood still for him.  “I’m not going into a paddock with 7 randy bulls,” I told him, “it’s just not safe.”  So we had no choice but to leave them and hope for the best.

After another day or so, they’d all settled down and it was in the end very easy to separate my girls and Campbell our borrowed bull.  I put nails through the gate gudgeons and bent them around to prevent the gate from being lifted off again.

A month came and went and the bulls weren’t interested in my girls at all, so I knew they’d both conceived, but I still had six bulls roaming around my big paddock.  To be honest, I wasn’t too worried.  The big paddock is inadequately fenced so I hadn’t put my cattle into it, but had grass that was reaching waist height in it.  We had a very wet spring and summer so it wasn’t a fire risk, but it just kept growing and seemed like a great waste of feed.  Having the bulls roaming took a lot of the grass down.

Then I got a call from the neighbour on the other side.  “You got some fresian bulls at the moment?” I explained the situation to him and his whole manner changed.  They’d broken through to his place and he was worried about his heifers that he didn’t want in calf.  He was going to tell me off, but since they weren’t mine and had wandered through from further over, that wasn’t my responsibility.

© Copyright Colin Grice and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

It took a couple of months before they were gone.  Even then, I noticed one that had dodged the round up.  We managed to drive him through the hole in the floodgate and patched up the hole after him.

By this stage, I’d gotten a couple of bobby calves - one heifer and one steer.  I was warned that she could start cycling at four months of age and one of those bulls would kill her if he tried to mount her.  Not to mention that she’d be far too small to have a calf.

The floodgates are a mess again.  It only takes one storm to raise the level and speed of the stream to wash away all sorts of things, so it’s time to go and make sure that we’re not going to have a repeat.  We have a few ideas of how we may make them a bit more secure, we’ll just have to see if it all works.