The Stud Returns

1 September 2008

Friday morning Arthur was returned home after 3 months away on Stud duty at Muriwai Valley Farm. Both Aaron and I had to go to work so we told Bev to put him in the paddock with Spotty and Stanley. Friday night Aaron was staying in Auckland so I left work early and arrived home at 4. I drove in the gate hoping to catch a glimpse of Arthur but I could only see Spotty and Stanley and the gate to the stockyards was wide open. While it was a relief to see the other gates into the stockyard were closed, I was worried about the absence of Arthur. I continued up to the house and as I drove past the shed I discovered Arthur was in with the girls. Confused but reassured I parked the car and let the boys out of their run. I went inside to get changed and several minutes later went out onto the verandah. Bloody hell! The dogs were on the patio and so were the chickens. They were all just sitting nose to nose staring at each other. I ran back to the door and called the boys into the house. Surprisingly they responded and I shut them in. I grabbed the chickens pellets, shook the box, opened the coop and the chickens ran in after me. Order was restored within less than a minute. It took me a few minutes to figure out how they’d got out and then I saw the massive hole. The dogs had clearly been launching themselves at sparrows in the coop again and had stretched the chicken netting in the process. 2 sheets of netting had been forced apart, creating a lovely big doorway. I wasn’t sure how long they’d been out but with 3 eggs in the nesting box I’m guessing it hadn’t been long. I can’t believe the dogs didn’t attack the chickens on sight. They kill every bird they can get their paws on. They also love to chase the sole chicken left on Gary’s property every time they see it. Perhaps they realize that our chickens are our pets? Or more likely, they were so bemused to see the chickens on the patio that it hadn’t yet occurred to them that they should chase them. With chickens safely locked away I went and fed out the pigs. When I came back up the hill I went back in to see Arthur. I’ll be honest, after 3 months away I was worried he might have forgotten me or become unaccustomed to lots of human company. I needn’t have worried, he automatically ran up to me and started grunting enthusiastically. I wasn’t sure what to do about moving Arthur. I knew it wouldn’t be particularly difficult but… What can I say? Arthur is the Barry White of the pig world – big and black with a deep sexy voice. The girls were clearly besotted. Joy grunted at him, rubbed snouts and repeatedly wiggled her behind in his face. As for Phyllis, she was acting all coy. She was quite clearly smitten, snuggling up to Arthur as much as possible. And then I noticed Phyllis was showing all the signs of being heat. Uh oh. I took a closer look at the piggies. Double uh-oh. Arthur had clearly been showing off his new found skills. That wasn’t quite the plan. We had intended Arthur to be with the boys until Belle was gone and then put Arthur with Joy down by the pond. Now what? This situation could land us with 2 litters of piglets instead of the intended 1. The 3 of them were just so happy though that I really didn’t have the heart to separate them. So in the end I didn’t. That evening Aaron rang to let me know that Bev had decided not to put Arthur in with the boys because Stanley was so small and she feared for his safety. She’d also checked the girls weren’t in heat and they hadn’t been. Clearly a day with Arthur had set Phyllis’s hormones racing. Saturday morning I cleaned the troughs and houses. Arthur, Joy and Phyllis were as cosy a trio as they had been the night before. Phyllis especially is just so cute. She’s usually quite talkative but she’s gone all quiet. She siddles up to Arthur and snuggles in close and then she lifts her ear so he can grunt sweet nothings into it. She is definitely a pig in love. When they were 3 months old Joy was all shy and gaga over Arthur but Phyllis was just an excited, happy-go-lucky piggy who had no time for Arthur’s affections. How times change! Free Stuff – you gotta love it! Aaron arrived home mid morning. There were 2 more blue barrels (from Kevin) strapped to the roof rack, The boot was full of sawdust and sacks of sawdust from the Matakana Sawmill. He’d picked up all the Hessian sacks from Troy’s place. There were new containers for collecting fruit and bread from New World in Orewa and there was just one crate of vegetables from the orchard – all potatoes. The last item was unexpected. Usually we have 2 or 3 crates of fruit & veg for the pigs and this sees us through until Monday afternoon. However, the Warkworth fruit & veg place admirably sources all its products locally and unfortunately, due to the weather, their growers can’t currently supply their usual quantity or quality of produce. That meant the pigs had no option but to eat hot mashed potato with cheese and pellets for the weekend. Not that they complain, in fact we’ve noticed that on cold winter mornings the piggies seem to quite like hot mashed potato and cheese. A couple of months ago we discovered the ultimate treat for pigs – hot mashed kumara, mixed with mashed soft pears and crumbled feta waste. It is the only time the pigs have ever refused to move at feeding time. Usually they race from trough to trough trying to steal each others food. We emptied the car of its contents. The hessian sacks were excellent. It was good to see they’re all Fair Trade coffee bean sacks from different countries, from Brazil to Ethopia. In fact they’re quite funky looking and it almost seems a shame to use them for my compost! Although Aaron had filled several of the sacks with sawdust, at some point he’d decided to just shovel the sawdust straight into the back of the car. We shoveled the sawdust into some of the empty sacks. The boot of the car was an absolute mess but macrocarpa sawdust does smell nice. And it has to be said it sure beats the car’s usual smell of sour milk; the result of several cheese spillages. In fact, it appears the sawdust has eliminated the previous odours. Apart from the hassle of brushing and vacuuming all the sawdust out of all the crevices I’m thinking it’s possibly something we should repeat in the future if we have another cheese spillage. Mind you, a packet of baking soda would probably do the trick just as well and be a darn site easier to clean up. Sheep Herding for Dummies After a quick stop for a coffee and a bite to eat Aaron decided we needed to move our main flock of sheep out of the southern paddock. The sheep, the pigs and the ever increasing colony of wild rabbits have chewed the grass into almost non-existence. We had both sides of the drive lined with fencing and we parked Aaron’s car in front of the gate. We walked Spotty and Stanley over the ridge into the other paddock and then while Aaron took the dogs back up to the house I put some sheep nuts into a bucket then opened the gates to the paddock. I shook the bucket and the sheep came running. I sprinkled the pellets through the stockyard and out the gate and partially up the drive and then walked back up to the shed. I watched the sheep come into the stockyards and partially out the gate so I left them to get on with it. Back up at the house we started our weekly chipping. During the week we had accumulated 6 crates of fruit and veg scraps to chip. Because the unrelenting rain has caused a lot of the produce to rot early, by the time we get it it’s not fit for pig consumption. However, put through our chipper, it becomes one giant coleslaw and our worm farm is now positively heaving with very grateful worms. We spent the next hour chipping willow branches from the tree Aaron had chopped down the weekend before. While this was going on I noticed a bit of lovemaking going on in the pig paddock. It wasn’t quite the “wham bam thank you ma’m” I was expecting. The pigs actually seemed to be enjoying it. Suddenly I felt like some seedy voyeur and averted my eyes. I started doing a quick mental calculation. A pig’s gestation period is 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days, which means we could have piglets for Christmas. Cool! Once the chipping is done we usually clean out the chicken coop and turn the compost piles but it was drizzling miserably and Aaron’s back was still playing up. So we decided to check that the sheep were now in their new paddock. In order not to scare them in the wrong direction in case they were still on the drive, we went into the bush to approach from the back. Aaron took the dogs nextdoor to Gary’s place and I walked down to the southern paddock. Ahhh Crap! The sheep had not only not gone to their new paddock, they were now in fact exactly where they had been when I’d initially opened the gates, resting up by the back fence. How is it that they will escape as soon as something’s wrong with the fencing, but leave a gate wide open and the thought of going through it just freaks them out? I walked over to Gary’s to let Aaron know. The 4 of us then walked back down to the paddock. Aaron and I got in and the dogs sat by the fence. We positioned ourselves to guide the sheep through the gates. Yeah right! Anyone who knows about our previous sheep herding attempts will know that sheep will not be guided. In fact sheep will always do the thing you least expect. Except of course we now expect them to do the unexpected so we’re prepared for failure now before we start. And we weren’t disappointed. We got them up to the gates and as they were about to walk through them Thyme turned around and bolted past us. The others quickly did the same. You see, sheep law dictates that the first sheep to make a move in a different direction automatically assumes the leader role and the others must quickly follow. As this only ever makes sense to sheep this proves my theory that sheep are f***ing stupid. Aaron followed after the sheep and I got back into position. This is where hills, trees, sheds and other obstacles in paddocks quickly go from being wonderful landscape features to being a pain in the arse. The sheep came over the hill and with a few slow moves in the right direction we had them back by the stockyards again. And then Tulip decided to bolt past me and back up around the hill. It was now my turn to guide them back up and over. And all was going well until they decided they wanted to run in circles around the scrub at the top of the hill. I lost the plot. I was sliding all over the place in the mud and drizzle and the air was turning blue with expletives. Eventually the sheep ran down the hill in the wrong direction and then up through the trees. “What the hell are you doing?!” Aaron yelled “What the hell am I doing?!?” it’s hard to know who started copping more abuse at that point, Aaron or the sheep. Aaron wasn’t interested. He instructed me where I was to stand and took off after the sheep himself. Not long after the sheep came back over the hill with Aaron behind. Typical. Despite the dogs being outside the paddock we got them to move along the fenceline to position themselves wherever the sheep were heading. They in fact did an excellent job of doing exactly what they were told. And then Aaron started moving exactly as I had seen Duncan the shearer’s sheep dogs do, short, fast movements as soon as the sheep move slightly, then stand completely still. I followed suit. Getting the dogs to move as well seemed to help. Amazingly the sheep responded and suddenly they were through the gates and running up the drive with Aaron following behind. I was quite frankly stunned that it had worked on our 3rd attempt. The sheep ran to the far end of their new paddock and didn’t appear to move from that point for the rest of the day. Stoked we’d succeeded we called it a day and headed indoors. Two Flocks Become One First thing Sunday morning we fed out. As we walked past the sheep we noticed 2 rams in the same paddock. Uh oh. Spike had jumped the fence, leaving Treacle and Bailey on the other side. Initial attempts to separate Spike from the main flock didn't even come close to working so Aaron pulled back the standards by the stream and we spent the next 15 minutes trying to convince Treacle and Bailey to go through the gap. Eventually they ran through and that was that, our 2 flocks had become 1. There's not a chance in hell we'll be able to separate them again. The last time we did that we had to hire Duncan and his dogs. Oh well, the sheep need shearing in the next couple of months and it will be perfect timing for separating the lambs from their mothers as well. In the meantime they'll just be one big happy family. Except for Herb and Spike. Spike clearly thought his luck was in when he jumped the fence but his father quickly put him in his place. What Type of Flooring to Use in a Chicken Coop On Sunday Aaron’s back was still sore. He was going to turn the compost but I suggested he just top them up this week. So while Aaron added the vege coleslaw and coffee grounds that I’d been collecting from the café at work, I cleaned out the chicken coop. I noticed the rat trap had gone off again under the nesting box. I couldn’t see any rat but there was fur and what looked to be bits of rat scattered around. I opened the trap. Bingo! One headless rat. That’s the 2nd time a trapped rat appears to have been eaten by another hungry rat. I added the body to the compost, where it joined the other 3 rats I’d thrown in there earlier in the week. Thursday night the dogs had caught an enormous rat and left its lifeless body by my car. It’s good to be able to add the occasional blood and bone to the compost pile! The soiled hay and chip from the coop went into the compost. With all the sawdust Aaron had collected from the sawmill I decided to see if the chickens would prefer it to the chip. I spread 2 ½ sacks of it around the coop and put new hay in the nesting boxes. The chickens wouldn’t go near it so I spread some chip over it. The chickens decided to brave the new flooring but treated it with great caution for the rest of the day. I’ve learnt that chickens (well ours at least) do not like change. They need at least 24-48 hours to adjust to change. By the next day I discovered the sawdust is far superior to the chip. It soaks up all moisture and creates a much more pleasant environment in wet winter conditions. However, the chickens prefer to scratch around in the chip so I shall use a combination of sawdust and chip from now on. Uses For Dead Rats… Sunday was a fairly laidback kind of day. It was cold and overcast and not exactly inspiring. At one point while we were out walking the dogs we decided to take them into the southern paddock where the sheep had been. We took them over the ridge to where I’d discovered some new rabbit holes and the boys had lots of fun digging at the holes and chasing scents. Unfortunately it was the middle of the day so there weren’t any rabbits to catch. Aaron decided he needed a gun. The bunnies must die! As we wandered back along the drive to our place. The real estate lady for Gilbert’s place hopped out of her 4WD at the driveway entrance. Our dogs of course went racing to meet her. “Here!” I yelled, not that they listened but I guess it’s the thought that counts. We wandered up to see what she was doing. Waiting for prospective buyers to turn up apparently. She reminded us our dogs were fat. Aaron set her straight. “They’re winter coats. They’re outdoor dogs”. She attempted to gain favour by suggesting their coats were too glossy for outdoor dogs. Too late. Never tell a mum her kids are fat. And there my friends is a lesson in how not to win friends and influence people... We took the dogs for a walk at the back of the stream to go check on the cattle. There’s plenty of grass where they are so they weren’t complaining. In fact they pretty much ignored us completely. It’s a good sign. We walked back and a late model jeep pulled into the drive. We jumped back over the fence and wandered back into our property. I joked to Aaron that we should be careful our muddy, scruffy appearances don’t put off buyers. 30 seconds later the jeep drove off, followed closely by the real estate agent. Score! The last thing we want is new neighbours. All that extra grazing and different places to walk the dogs is fabulous. When we got back to the house Aaron logged onto the Internet and trawled the Trade Me site for a gun. Eventually he decided to bid on an old 22 for under $100. I figure it’s probably worth it if it means we can save some of our pasture and turn the little blighters into bunny burgers à la the River Cottage rabbit disposal method. We spent the next few hours cleaning up around outside the house. Weeds, mainly kikuyu have been encroaching on the area so they needed to be pulled out. And the dogs are always creating a mess by ripping apart boxes, windnetting, polystyrene, socks and basically anything they can find to play tug of war with. Aaron even discovered a rat skull under one of the picnic tables. Mmmm, nice! I didn’t ask where he put it just in case he’s decided to glue it to his skull mug. Hey, now there’s an idea! Some people put great Texas longhorn skulls on their front gate. Frank uses stag skulls. We could start putting up rat skulls! It’s kind of weird and cool all at the same time. And just think, that could easily put off even more prospective buyers for the properties nextdoor. Hmmm, I may just have hatched an evil plan here… Maybe Aaron should just keep growing his beard as well… Christ, don’t tell him I said that. He’s promised me it’s coming off as soon as the rain stops for 3 days in succession. Dog Mats Earlier in the week Aaron had asked me to keep a look out at the shops for some suitable outdoor mats for the dogs to sleep on at night. Sunday afternoon I was vacuuming the carpet around the indoor dog mat. I was looking at the torn bags of weed matting (the surgical cloth I’ve scored from work) that I use to keep the dogs on the mat (Yeah right!) and I suddenly struck upon a genius of an idea. I went into the bar and sorted through the Hessian sacks for some interesting looking ones. I took all the surgical cloth out of the plastic bags and stuffed this inside the sacks. I then loosely sewed the ends. 10 plastic bags became 5 big sack pillows – much harder for the dogs to ‘accidentally’ roll off of and onto the carpet. Coincidentally there were 2 large clean plastic bags amongst the surgical cloth. I took these out to the carport with some duct tape. I partially filled the plastic bags with sawdust, taped them shut and slipped them inside a couple of the softer Hessian sacks. Instant comfy dog mats. Best of all the dogs realized what they were and started using them straight away. As for the sack pillows, they work brilliantly. The dogs either sleep on the mat or the sacks but not on the carpet anymore. Hallelujah! Vehicular Madness Monday morning at some ungodly hour Aaron’s alarm went off. He got up raced around getting ready for work and then hopped in his car. It wouldn’t start. Before I’d gone to bed I’d noticed an internal car light glowing. When I went out to investigate I realized the boot was open slightly. Sawdust had got in the shutting mechanism. I scraped around in the dark and finally got it to close but it must have popped open again. I got up to try help Aaron jumpstart the car but it refused. It started raining. Understandably Aaron was mad as hell and getting more annoyed by the minute. I gave him my car keys but it was a mission to get all the vegetable crates into my car, in fact he had to leave half of them behind. Here’s a word of advice – never buy a Toyota Levin if you want to carry anything other than human luggage. Some idiot designed it so the front seats only tilt forward very slightly, presumably so only children and dogs can get in the back. As for the boot, there’s heaps of space except at the boot entrance. Grocery bags are about the only thing I’ve ever managed to get in there. So Aaron left and the dogs and I returned our beds. I didn’t really get back to sleep though so I was up fairly early. I’m not sure why I bothered, it drizzled all day. The pigs decided to sleep the day away in their houses. I knew just how they felt. Apart from a few walks with the dogs I really didn’t do much at all other than to ring the AA. About 2 O’clock I started to feel guilty about my complete lack of motivation. The drizzle had abated so I took the vacuum cleaner outside to Aaron’s car. I spent nearly 2 hours vacuuming it. Geez what a mess. Muddy dogs, vegetable scraps, cheese spills, sawdust, and about 12 months of not cleaning it had left it in a rather messy state. In the end that was all I had the energy for. The muddy paw print smears all over the interior would have to wait for another day. Aaron arrived home shortly after that. I started sorting through the fruit and veg scraps and making the piggies dinner. Meanwhile I got Aaron to replace my worn out el-cheapo windscreen wipers with my new state-of-the-art Bosch ones that I’d scored through Jacqui. I couldn’t wait for it to rain again just so I could see them in action. And if all this sound very odd, there’s a couple of reasons for my excitement. Many years ago, while on my O.E., I had an English driving instructor who was obsessive about clean windscreens, so much so that that is quite frankly about all I learnt from him that I remember. I now am also an obsessive compulsive windscreen cleaner. My problem of late has been that I have been driving in the rain on most days recently and as it’s nearly all highway driving I am constantly having to deal with dirty truck spray. My windscreen wipers weren’t so much wipers as smearers. I ended up feeling like I was driving blind a lot of the time. And then a couple of weeks ago I discovered Troy’s windscreen wipers and, well, I’ll be honest, it was instant windscreen wiper envy. I wanted them, I was going to have them and that was that. So now I will still have the dirtiest car in Northland but I will also have the cleanest windscreen. That makes me happy!