The 2 half-wild piglets and Joy’s 5 piglets went off to the butcher last Wednesday. By all accounts it was a fairly easy load-and-drive-off job for Aaron.
This job always has to happen on a Wednesday as I still don’t feel ready to watch the piglets leave our property. In fact just thinking about it brings tears to the eyes and a lump in the throat. If it wasn’t for Aaron we’d have the place overrun with pigs because I’d never be able to let them go.
I’m looking forward to the bacon of course and a nice ham for my 40th in a couple of weeks time.
It’s funny but Joy had quite clearly decided she’d had enough of her babies just a week or two before they left. When it came to feeding out she just lost all patience with them and she had little interest in following them around or checking up on them.
I noticed she was like that with the last litter. In fact it’s been the same with all the mums. Some time between 5 and 6 months the mums just want their kids to leave the nest and do their own thing.
Olive Needs A Break
Olive, the poor thing, has been diligently feeding her babies for 4 months and during that time has not grown at all. She’s never been underweight but she is now barely bigger than her babies.
Like Joy she loves them dearly and mothers them terribly. So Aaron made the decision that they had to be separated. On Monday we coaxed Olive out of the paddock with a bucket of food and led her into the pond paddock. She ate her meal then after a quick wander around decided she wanted to be back with her brood. She studied the electric wire for a while and then, once we had left to go back up to the house she ran through.
Aaron found her searching for a way back into her old paddock. We put her back in the pond area and within minutes she was on the other side of the wire again.
We put her back and went off to do some tree planting around the stream. Maybe 20 minutes later we heard a squeal and there she was on the other side of the wire again. This time we doubled the wire and she stood for hours looking through the wire over at her old paddock.
She was clearly upset and no doubt somewhat uncomfortable from her milk-engorged udder. We were unable to console her but in the end it is the best thing for her.
About 7pm I headed down the hill to check on her. It had been raining quite heavily and I wanted to make sure she was in bed warm and dry. No such luck. I don’t think she’d moved from the fenceline. Her brood would have been well asleep in their bed and there she stood, soaking wet, next to the wire, staring into the dark.
I spent a while talking to her, trying to encourage her to bed but she refused to move. I plodded back up to the shed and put some fruit into a bucket and came back down.
“Olive darling,” I waved the bucket under her nose “come out of the rain darling”. She half-heartedly followed me into the house. I put the fruit on the floor and she ate while I scratched and massaged her body.
Eventually she lay down and I continued to massage her. Aaron appeared out of the darkness, concerned that I had been gone so long. After another couple of minutes I said goodbye and hoped she would curl up in the hay and sleep.
She was certainly doing that when we got up to feed at 4am on Tuesday morning so hopefully she stayed there after I left.
I know she doesn’t want to be alone or separated from her babies but she’ll have them back on the weekend, providing she’s dried up. We’re more than happy for them to be altogether providing she’s no longer feeding them.
It is interesting that in the NZ Pig Welfare Code it is illegal to let sows feed their piglets for more than 6 weeks. The way the code is written it is strongly implied that to do so for any longer is tantamount to animal cruelty and that sows will only do so for longer if they feel bullied by their youngsters.
Yet to see the distress that Olive and Joy, and to a lesser extent our other girls, feel when they are separated from their youngsters I think it’s a load of hogwash.
I prefer to let nature take its course but in this instance we have to consider Olive’s welfare. She is in perfect condition but she is small. She needs a rest so that she can grow. At least I hope she grows now. I really don’t know how these things work in pigs. Will her early pregnancy leave her with stunted growth?
When I look at her sister Emily there is quite a discrepancy in size.
A Nervous Disorder?
Emily still has the shakes. Not so bad now I think but she’s still not 100%.
I am not convinced it’s the paspalum staggers she was diagnosed with but I find it difficult to believe she is still suffering from a nervous disorder from her experience with Joy.
I had hoped the mineral lick would eliminate the condition. It certainly seems to have helped but it’s not fixed it.
We may need to up the dose slightly until we can start fertilising the pastures.
As far as I can tell her and Stanley seem to get on well. Occasionally there’s a heated exchange of grunts but for the most part they seem to be just fine.
Maybe she just needs more cuddles and reassurance that she’s a lovely piggie.
When she goes into the maternity paddock I plan to reunite her and Olive. They had a good relationship and it would be nice for them to be together again.
I know Olive has spent many hours in Mabel and Rose’s paddock and I suspect her and Emily have talked through the fence quite a bit.
One Big Happy Family
I have to say that one very nice discovery has been seeing Mabel, Rose and Olive all in the same paddock with all the piglets together, all intermingling pleasantly. Olive certainly has had no problem when all 3 sets of piglets are in her paddock and over time Mabel and Rose have become quite comfortable having Olive and her lot visiting.
They are supposed to be separate but it’s impossible to stop pigs digging under fences if they want to get to the other side. Aaron’s hammered into place plenty of barriers to stop the visiting but still they find a way.
In my mind this just goes to prove that much of the NZ Pig Welfare Code is a joke. These pigs don’t get stressed from being together, they get more stressed from being kept apart!
A Year On
12 months ago we had just said goodbye to HelpXers Alex and Tristan and said hello to Jay and Bex. Projects were being completed at great speed and we finally felt we were getting somewhere.
A year down the track we are in our 4th HelpXer-free week in a row and while it would be nice to have some extra hands to help us out, I think we are both enjoying not having to host.
Certainly the bank account is noticing it. At roughly $75 per person per week the costs can soon add up, especially if we have 4 HelpXers staying at a time.
I thought I would never cope again without those extra hands but it turns out that hosting is the last thing I want to do when I feel tired.
We had 3 lots of HelpXers lined up for this month but all have cancelled. We’re still getting requests but either from people with no farm-type experience or people who are at the end of their holiday and want somewhere cheap to stay. I just can’t be bothered with hosting now unless people actually genuinely want to experience the lifestyle.
The other thing we now have to consider as well is whether we’re prepared to take on girls who travel alone. The amount of heavy lifting, shifting loads, etc that needs to be done these days I’m dubious as to whether most females could cope. I consider myself pretty strong these days but even I struggle to cope at times. Just carrying the crates of veges and fruit and bags of cheese between shed and coolstore can be a mission.
I’m regularly swinging around 10 – 20kg weights, and while my biceps are impressive, it’s not difficult to strain my back or shoulders if I’m not careful.
The Joy of Learning???
Whether it’s the Vitamin D, the zinc or a combination of the handful of tablets I swallow daily, my fatigue levels have dropped considerably. I still feel in need of a holiday but I am once again functioning mentally.
With the mental function restored I am now back to reading books about the nature of food and documentaries about the state of the world.
We watched 2 DVDs on the weekend – ‘The End of Suburbia’ and ‘Escape from Suburbia’. The 2nd one was okay, a bit like most sequels, but The End of Suburbia was quite frankly a little disturbing. It’s all about the Peak Oil crisis and its impact on the US, which of course has massive global implications.
I’d dismissed stuff I’d heard about the world running out of oil. “Yeah whatever. It’s just an excuse for oil companies and oil rich countries to charge more”. Every decade we hear these “The end is nigh!” statements and it’s always a case of the boy who cried wolf.
Turns out I may be wrong about this one. ‘The End of Suburbia’ certainly made me think about things.
Apparently crude oil won’t run out in my lifetime but it will become a luxury item. Experts predict that crude oil is going to start running out by 2015 at the latest. By 2015 we will have consumed half the world’s oil and by the year 2100 we will most likely have consumed the remainder.
That means the prices are going to continue to rise at the pump until most of us can no longer afford it.
And now, as I read ‘What’s Not on the Label’ and its comments on the global food trade, I’m starting to feel more than a little concerned.
Aaron and I believe that the way countries like New Zealand currently live and shop is unsustainable and will change dramatically in the next 50 years. There are many people globally who believe that as we run out of oil, societies like ours will return somewhat to the way they were 100 years ago. The suburban sprawl will halt and more people will move to the country in order to lead more self-sustainable lifestyles.
Small communities and towns like ours will need to become more self-supporting, just like they were 100 years ago. The old and the new will start to merge as we learn to adapt.
And so, we’re anticipating that by 2020 we are going to start noticing some subtle changes. I think farmers markets, community supported agriculture and barter & trade will become a bigger presence.
I love the thought that one day our suburban malls may become giant markets full of locally grown produce and locally manufactured goods. I like the idea of the return of small businesses of olde and the death of multi-national conglomerates.
I like the idea that in my lifetime I may see the end of ‘Made in China’ labels on manufactured goods in our shops.
Of course, the possible good things that may come out of the Peak Oil crisis doesn’t change the bad stuff happening now.
The more I read about the global food trade the more sickened I become. The human rights abuses experienced in 3rd world countries are more often than not linked to the food trade. I am now stuck with the knowledge that every time I buy something from the supermarket that isn’t 100% New Zealand made or isn’t organic or isn’t Fair Trade, I am very probably contributing to the torture or misery of someone in a Third World country.
And even if I do manage to only buy these things and to avoid supermarkets altogether, every time I buy animal feed, whether it be for pigs, chickens or dogs I still continue to contribute to these horrors.
For instance, I can never, ever go back to buying non-Fair Trade coffee or tea. The human rights abuses behind those 2 items products alone are just appalling.
And now I have just finished reading about the prawn industry and it has left me feeling physically sick. In the last 10 years prawns have been a fantastically cheap, healthy product that I used to have no problem buying in the supermarket. When I think of how many I have consumed; and now I wonder how many came from Asian countries where it is common practice to farm them in ponds into which huge amounts of antibiotics, growth hormones and all manner of chemicals have been emptied in a bid to grow prawns as big as possible and as fast as possible before they die from chemical overload.
Acres and acres of mangroves have been cleared to create numerous ponds which regularly become chemical wastelands, too toxic to farm anything.
The organisations that own supermarkets are truly evil. On a quest for maximum profit they have become responsible for a huge amount of global suffering, whether it be people, animals or environmental.
It’s sickening, it’s depressing and it’s frightening.
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