The Piglets have Arrived!

Sometimes I have a dozen pictures but yesterday because we took three hours out of the day to collect the new piglets the work became hurried. And I just forgot to take photos. 🤭

But our first group of piglets have arrived and they are great!

The piglets are all very active. One just started running in circles – the rest immediately started in on the edible weeds and multiple fallen mulberries.

My small farm helper asked if I was going to name them. I said no. We will be raising them for pork so no names. How about Charlotte, he said, from Charlottes Web? I shook my head. He remembered about no names then thought again for a minute. How about we name them all Charlotte – they can be The Charlottes.

I gave this serious thought.

That sounds fair, I said.

He smiled, pleased with his success.

So there we have it. The Charlottes have arrived.

(You can see the zinc in this one’s ear). They came out of a commercial hog operation. The woman who runs it now, with her cousin, is the great grand daughter of the founder.

I am not sure how big the hog farm is because we were instructed to meet a mile down the road from the facility so there was no risk of contamination. We are all super careful of spreading disease from one farm to another. We drove to a quiet country road and after a few minutes we saw a truck and trailer approaching. They parked at a short distance from us. R jumped out and paid them, I opened our trailer door then they carried our five piglets from their trailer to ours, kept their distance for a chat then drove off.

It felt like a covert drug operation but with pigs!

The pigs are about 25-30 pounds in weight. Cost $42US each and are a White Landrace/Duroc cross.

And they are really white. I will be anointing them with zinc every day – we are going to have to be vigilant about sunburn until they acclimate to the outdoors. And of course today has dawned fine and clear and dangerously sunny again.

I wear long sleeves and long pants and a hat when I am outside in the sun. But I cannot dress my piggies like scarecrows!

Their food and water and wallow are under the trees. The weeds are long. I will coat them in mineral sun protection and hopefully they get into the wallow as soon as possible.

For sleeping last night they had the choice of the old stock trailer packed with straw or that blue plastic pig house packed with straw, but they chose an old corrugated iron culvert deep in the weeds in the side room of the Trailer Park Pen that I left there for them to play in. Maybe because they have known nothing but metal all their short lives it felt familiar.

Who knows.

Good morning. Today I am creating a daytime, outside run for the ducklings. It will be a work in progress! But they have outgrown two tubs now and need to develop their running muscles.

I cannot bear to lock animals or birds (or me) in cages.

Take care and Talk soon.

Celi

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