Charlotte the Pig is Feeling Poorly

She has started limping quite badly. And a fat pig limping is a very sorry sight. 

It is  one of her back legs below that rather large ham of a butt-hock. Sorry Char had to say it. I have called around and on occasion a pig will pull a muscle when they are young and growing fast and fooling around, so it is bed rest for her.   She is still eating and drinking and coming when she is called so I am going to play ‘wait and see’ for another day or two.. Poor Charlotte.

I have palpated up and down the leg, and looked into her little dainty hooves. Nothing untoward at all. No swelling. No heat. In fact she did not even flinch and just sat getting her ears scratched with no worries at all while John and I looked her over.

Sheila is more than happy to lay down with her and keep her company while she is on bed rest. Maybe she will get her fair share of the feed while Charlotte recovers. That pig needs to go on a diet. A pig on a diet is a bit of an oxymoron!

Apparently Kupa and Tui have the situation in hand.

We had another windy day yesterday with a bit of a nip in the air. When the Guinea Fowl hunch their already hunched backs I know it is getting colder. 

In the real winter they will not even go outside, they just hang out in the barn. It will be interesting to see what the peafowl do when it gets Really cold.

Today I begin The Writing. I will not bore you with the details as I go along. However, if you would like, I will give you a word count so that you can be an informed support team.  My goal for the first week is 2,500 – 3,000 words a day.

The Daily View.

Yesterdays temps. Remember that when reading the max and min temperature gauge. You read at the bottom of the little pin. For the highs (on the right) you read the numbers climbing up and for the lows (on the left) you are going to read the numbers climbing down.  That is clear as mud. But once it makes sense to you it is easy.

You will remember that The Father – my dad – is charting our temperatures. So here is almost a months worth of Central Illinois highs (blue) and lows (pink). As you can see, the cold is coming! 

Thank you Dad.

And now it is time for the milking and the animals. There is a wee change in  routine in the mornings now. I go out to milk in the deep dark with my torch, I open the gate for Daisy, turn on the lights in the barn, put out hay and grain for the pigs, hay for the calf and a little for Daisy, milk the cow, clean up, feed the calf his milk, feed the cats and dogs their milk, feed the pigs their milk, and fill a dish for the peacocks (or they steal the kitten’s milk). Then let Daisy back out to her pasture, turn the lights back out in the barn and leave with my own milk.  At this point the barn birds and animals  all yawn and settle back down to sleep again until dawn.  When the sun comes up I go back out and do the chickens and the sheep, who have slept right through the first shift.

Daisy needs to be milked 12 hours apart you see.  Well, as close to that as I can get anyway.  It makes me smile to turn the lights back out in the early morning and hear them all shuffle and grizzle then settle back down to wait for the dawn.

You all have a lovely day.

celi

PS For the duration of The NanoWriMo Writing, I am going to suspend the Year Ago Today portion of my daily WeB-Log and please forgive me if I do not get to visit your own sites as much as I would like.  However I will certainly be here every morning before dawn, bringing you the news, pictures and weather from the Farmy.