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.
The Kitchen's Garden 
58 responses to “Charlotte the Pig is Feeling Poorly”
Good luck with NaNo! i’m going to try a writing blast today and tomorrow because I will be gone some this weekend.
Yes, as much as anything else it is a good feeling to get a good number of words on the page, all about commitment at this stage! c
Oh no, poor piggy – hope she is feeling better soon.
Have a beautiful weekend.
🙂 Mandy
I know, poor lovey, she got up for her milk this morning, and then laid back down, it is a worry.. c
Poor Char — hope she is feeling better soon!
I hope the bed rest does the trick for Charlotte..I started the writing a day before you and got off to a flying start. Youngest’s tough diagnosis has rattled my composure…not sure how Nano will go across the wide sea here… best wishes, annie
Oh no, I hope things go better for your Youngest. Maybe the writing will help calm the mine somewhat? c
Sadly it’s a lifelong diagnosis..struggling to come to terms with that. Writing is all over the place c xx
Can you write about it?.. c
will try 🙂 x
Get well kisses for Charlotte, Break a leg to you 🙂 Laura
The pea things are doing a very good impersonation of feathered meerkats. No mean feat in any man’s language. Charlotte looks very sad, which is not like the Charlotte I have come to know and love. Words like “hock” just don’t help.
Sorry Roger, i forgot how sensitive you are.. poor fellow. I am hoping that she will work her way out of it, it seems that she has torn a muscle or some such.. maybe in her hip, she was up for her milk this morning but not much else. i will keep a close eye on her.. c
Brrrr! Pour Charlotte – I hope she’s better soon. I decided to switch from Nano to the Poetic Asides poem-a-day challenge. I’m too out of practice with fiction writing to cope with 50K words.these days. Bon courage for your novel.
Morning Viv. we are off to a good start! Good luck with your poetry challenge.. c
With bed rest and Sheila keeping her company, hopefully Charlotte will be up and about soon!!! Good luck on Day #1!!!!!! xoxoxo
I do hope so di, have any of your pigs gone down like this? It is a worry.. c
We have had two healthy pigs with no problems so far, thank goodness. The plan is to artificially inseminate them this month or next, just the two of us. Sure hope that goes well and we can do it without problems. It will be a first time for both of us and our virgin pigs.
I made my self-imposed deadline of waking up at four, going straight to the page and cranking out my first day of NaNoWriMo, a piece called “Green Hat Incident.” I wish you good luck with your first day this afternoon and I hope that Charlotte benefits from her bed rest.
Well done Sharyn, you are ahead of me already and awesome that you can write coherently so early. I bet you feel good meeting your deadline, it will get easier as time goes on, the waking up that is! Now back to work for me, another 500 words then i can have a cup of coffee! c
I hope Charlotte is okay. I haven’t written a word yet – argh! Oh well it isn’t midnight yet!
just open the document and write three words.. just begin, just now, don’t wait until you have time. though i always find the starting easy, it is the finishing I need to work on! c
Yeeha – 700 words!
atta girl! c
I look forward to seeing the daily word count… give it hell in the first week and from there it’s easy… once entered a 30 articles in 30 days… kicked off quick with 5 and the rest came easy, finished in 14 days… good luck, and I hope the pig is alright.. it might just be a pinched nerve from bad posture or the likes….
I am hoping it is something like that, poor piggie, it has begun to get colder in the nights too.. I am well on my way to my goal for the day, and taking your advice to heart i am going to write like two crazy people for the first week, then breathe.. c
C– have I asked you where in central Illinois you live? I lived in Quincy for ten years and your landscapes look quite familiar. Good luck with the word count 🙂
We are about 100 miles south of Chicago, straight down.. it is very flat here.. c
I also have a sick pig this evening, she looked a bit wobbly at feeding time and after a short feed (for a pig) vomited and there was blood which is very worrying I think. She then went to her bed where I was able to check her out. Then when I went to feed her sister sick pig heard the feed hit the trough and hopped up and went out to try and claim her share. So I don’t know, I have never had any problems like this before either. I hit the web but came away more confused, although perhaps it may be some form of poisoning? I will have to wait til morning and then speak to the vet, although to be honest most of the vets in our area don’t really do pigs so it can be quite tricky to get help.
That does sound scary, The vet will ask is she eating and drinking, and if her snout is still cool and wet, though i would be tempted to isolate her, an illness can go from pig to pig like wildfire. And give her tons of fluids. Mix her feed with lots of water and add molasses. Then feed her more often. Mine drink a lot of milk anyway so I do not have to worry about fluids, but I am giving Charlotte extra because she can slurp it down quicker and did not want grain this morning. I guess the standing hurts. It is a worry. I looked into her eyes yesterday and said Why can’t you talk Char. However your piggie sounds much more worrying than Charlotte. Let me know how things are, won’t you?.. c
Feel better and soon Charlotte! Have a Great Day on the Farmy!
Hope Charlotte feels better soon, Celi: and that your book romps on its way at a brisk pace 🙂