Pigs # 18 - The Tymawr Two!

Sunday was not the proudest day in my farming career!  In the morning I found I'd lost a chicken to a fox, due to my slack shutting up last night (normally meticulous in doing the headcount and chasing up any escapees, just missed it last night).

James arrived with the weaners at 11:30ish, I'd double checked all the fence, cleaned their water / food troughs, really excited about their arrival. Around 2 minutes after James drove off both weaners escaped through the fence! They are only about 10 weeks old and are TINY in comparison to the pigs we had last time (16 & 20 weeks) and I just underestimated this when I went around the boundary.

The chase started badly, their escape route took them straight onto the lane (luckily just an access road for us and our 3 neighbours so no traffic), and they galloped madly away into the distance. Their first stop was our neighbour's garden (thankfully they were away for the day but they will have some interesting CCTV to watch on their return!!). I so nearly had them, but unlike our previous pigs, who obediently followed the food bucket, being newly weaned, and with me being an unfamiliar human, they were more scared than greedy. Within about 10 minutes one pig had escaped into a 5 acre field on our neighbour's farm. After several attempts to use some plastic garden furniture as a barrier to trap the remaining pig into a corner of the garden the second pig rushed past me and back up the lane. Jo, Ben & Kate then did a brilliant job of fielding her back into our yard. I puffed back a few seconds later (note to self, do more exercise!), in time to watch her easily going through the fence again, back onto the lane and down to our neighbour's house again. The pig rushed up and into a field with 4 or 5 horses in it, and covering around 4 acres. Again, I very nearly had it several times until it ran back up the lane, to be successfully navigated back into the yard by Jo, Ben & Kate.

The short summary is that I then spent the next 2 hours with my neighbours tracking down one pig around a mile away, culminating in a brilliant rugby tackle from Matthew Lawrence. I was totally overwhelmed by the kindness of our neighbours who spent hours of their valuable time helping me. Just hope I can repay it one day. About 2 hours later (time which I spent trudging around the woodland / fields / stream with James) we got a call from Barbara down on the common who had spotted another pig near her house. We jumped into the cars and sped down, and after 10 minutes or so James and his dog managed to track down and corner the remaining weaner, which we then managed to put in the boot of my car. After the 2 hours running around muddy fields and woodland, topped off with me slamming his head with the car boot, I'm pretty sure that James will refuse to do business with me ever again!

Lessons learnt:
1. Your neighbours are brilliant - help them freely - it will be repaid tenfold!
2. Weaners are small and scared - keep them in a barn or shed for a few weeks until they are used to you, follow a bucket and are a bit bigger!
3. Don't give up on a search! No animal gets left behind!

All's well that ends well, but I went to bed that night painfully aware that I'd wasted lots of good people's time and come VERY close to losing 2 lives prematurely. Other than learning the lessons above it just makes me increase my resolve to start farming properly and doing whatever it takes to change our lives for the better!

Cute pig photos to follow!!

Pigs # 17 - New Weaners Coming Tomorrow!

Organised with James from Morris Free Range Meats & Horticulture (https://www.facebook.com/#!/morrismeats) to get 2 new Welsh-Pietrain cross weaners tomorrow!  I've got a few bits and pieces to organise (fix a leak in the water trough, improvise a feeding trough) early in in the morning.  The pigs are TINY (in comparison to the last 2 pigs we bought) but they are around 10 weeks old instead of the roughly 18 weeks old that the last pigs we bought were.  Its made me think that perhaps the work I did last weekend on the boundary fence maybe needs to be improved!  I'll try to spend another hour on it tomorrow morning I think too.

After this batch of pigs, I think we will invest in a really good pedigree sow (most likely either a British Saddleback or British Lop), and some quality semen, almost certainly from a Duroc boar.  Putting the 2 together should give us a characterful, tasty, docile, friendly and efficient pig.  Combining that with an interesting woodland environment should give GREAT pork!