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Thursday, 13 January 2011
Angry doesn’t even come close to what I am feeling today. In fact anger could be seen as a mild, almost calm type of emotional response compared to how I feel.
I have had enough, absolutely had a gutsful and the cauldron of rage churning inside of me is enough to make me explode.
2 days ago the duck that has been nesting in the Whiskey’s old kennel suddenly emerged with 9 adorable, yellow fuzzballs with bright orange feet. She is the last of our fowl to have gone broody and we so desperately want her babies to survive.
“It’s not going to happen” I said with a pessimistic sigh.
“We’ll put up a temporary fence around the kennel right now” Aaron wasn’t going to be defeated
And so we herded the duck and her babies into the kennel and quickly erected chainlink fence and filled 3 water troughs of varying sizes. It’s a decent sized area right outside our bedroom window. I was so glad she’d nested in the kennel as it would be the safest area for her in the duck paddock.
Yesterday all 9 ducklings happily played outside.
“Isn’t wonderful to actually see the same amount of babies the next day” I said happily
This morning I was up at 4am to feed out. At about 5am I returned to the house and mother duck and ducklings were outside the kennel. I counted.
No. No. No!
“Where are they? Where are your babies darling?!” I scanned the small area, peered inside the house “Oh my god. What took them???”
Four. Four gone. Somewhere in a burrow close by 4 small, furry stomachs have been satiated and I cannot do anything. I stand and stare at the mother duck and her 5 remaining babies and I am useless. I cannot stop this slaughter because I don’t know what or where my enemy is. Of all the ducks she is such a good mother, while the others seem not to notice if their babies are not around this one keeps them close, keeps them safe and now this.
Have you ever been this angry? Have you ever felt so much frustration and rage that you want to attack? To kill? I want blood on my hands. I want something to pay!
I’m not interested in suffering, instant kill suits me just fine, but kill is what I want. I am sick of the pests. Sick of the cats, the stoats, the rats, the possums. All of them hunters, destroyers, wreakers of havoc. They constantly take and give nothing in return.
I want them dead. It is not their fault that they live but damnit, I want it to be my fault they are dead!
I want a stinking rotten pile of pests in my back yard. I want war. I want revenge. I want control and victory over all things feral on my property!
I can understand now why the victors of war would impale the severed heads of their enemies on pikes. There is part of me that wants to nail the bodies of these creatures to my fences. I want the flesh to rot off so that all I am left with is the sun-parched skeletal remains of my enemies.
I want the God of feral creatures to look down on my victims and understand that this is personal, that this is war, that I’ve had enough!
Damnit! Damnit!! Damnit!!! Stop taking my babies you bastards!
Saturday, 8 January 2011
Thursday morning I checked our traps with great anticipation, only to discover them all empty. I was gutted.
However, that changed in the afternoon. In the process of feeding out the pigs, Coppa showed great interest in the stoat trap on the driveway by the bantam run. Lo and behold a dead stoat!
Our first dead stoat. A nice healthy, adult as well, with its head well and truly crushed in our DOC2000 stoat trap. I whooped with joy and gave Coppa a big hug.
We hadn’t had any rabbit meat to bait the trap with so I wasn’t feeling hopeful, however, it turns out a piece of blade steak is just as tempting a morsel.
The trap’s a vicious thing and requires 2 people to reset it so I waited for Aaron to come home.
I recall reading somewhere that once you catch your first stoat you need to run its anal scent glands in and around the trap to attract further stoats. I donned a pair of gloves and while Aaron lifted the trap plate I removed the stoat. It was absolutely crawling with fleas. Undeterred I proceeded to rub the arse of the still soft and warm stoat in and around the 2 stoat traps. The stoat’s insides gurgled as I held onto it.
It was quite frankly a somewhat unpleasant and surrreal task but if it means more dead stoats then I will willingly wipe my traps with the arse of every stoat we catch.
This morning the traps were empty again, except for one of the rat traps. The rat was still alive unfortunately so I shoved the trap under Coppa’s nose. He grabbed the rat and with a few quick chomps it was all over.
So that’s 2 dead pests in less than 48 hours but I’m still not happy.
I really want to catch that wild cat that’s been hanging around the gate at the bottom of our drive.
Everybody Needs Good Neighbours
Our neighbours G & D have just returned to Australia after their 2 week annual summer holiday in NZ.
Although nice, friendly people, they are worlds apart from us in interests, intellect and property ideas. I can enjoy their company in small doses but they always arrive on the doorstep with alcohol and cigarettes, and as the alcohol consumption increases so does the smoking and the lack of meaningful conversation.
Usually we only catch up once or twice during their visits but this year their water tank had been completely drained by our other neighbour. We had told them we would fill their tank with our water pump but the pump got drenched in a heavy rain shower and blew the ignition component.
I had the week before Christmas to take it in for repair but I had other things to deal with and I figured our neighbour would have a go at fixing the water pipe to his tank. So the upshot is I didn’t take the pump in for repair until the end of the week, by which time it was too late to get a part ordered in and while our neighbour did spend 4 hours clearing his water pipe it was not the one to his house!
Instead he decided the best option was to make sure the water pipe to his goldfish pond was working and for the 2 of them to use our bathroom while they were here. That meant they visited every 2nd day and each time stayed for a drink and a chat.
We had of course said it was okay for them to do so. How could we not? Because of the drought the water in our tank has been pumped out of the creek on their property.
It also meant they could get their daily supply of meat; payment for grazing their land. Not that the meat really costs us anything but with only a bbq to cook on they only want the convenient cuts – steak, chops, sausages and bacon. By the end of their visit our own supply of meat is now down to stewing steak and roasts – not what I feel like cooking or eating in these consistently 30° summer temperatures.
They wanted eggs as well but our girls haven’t been laying consistently.
They also asked to come around for dinner a couple of times to catch up. They don’t have the ability to entertain us at their place with their lack of water and lack of electricity so I understand why they want to come to ours. What is a little annoying though is that when served dinner, one of them usually doesn’t feel like eating.
They only visit for 2 weeks every 6 months so I should just learn to deal with it but the fact is they’re our neighbours, not our buddies. I don’t have a problem being neighbourly but this summer was neighbour overload.
Having said all this I can’t deny that we are incredibly lucky to have such good neighbours up our drive. With one absent most of the time we get to utilise the land for livestock and dog walking. Not to mention dreaming of what we would do with the place if we could afford to buy it.
Our other neighbour is also absent most of the time, seemingly only coming home to sleep. Subsequently both blocks are overgrown and wild but also very quiet.
G has hinted in the past that he hopes to return to live on his block soon but this summer the story was quite different. His income has dropped a lot in the recession and D’s health problems are such that I doubt she will ever be able to live over here. She’s close to being wheelchair-bound and this summer, apart from day trips in the car, has been almost completely house-bound.
She said she wouldn’t be back here next summer so I suspect we may never see her again.
The Poison Man
Last summer when G came home from Aussie he moaned about how high the grass was growing on the side of his driveway.
“I’ll poison it with the most toxic weed spray I can find” he said.
We tried to talk him out of it but he said he had no choice, so spray he did. Through autumn and winter his driveway was devoid of vegetation but then spring hit and it was payback time. Having made the soil sick, mother nature was forced to grow weeds with long taproots – the only things able to draw essential nutrients.
By the time our neighbour arrived back in the country his driveway was absolutely infested with 5 foot high thistles.
Our sympathy levels were low; we’d warned him. He was annoyed but undeterred. There was only one thing for it – go out and spend several hundred dollars again on poisons. He started referring to himself as the Poison Man
For the first week he was home it drizzled a bit every day and we crossed our fingers that this good fortune would continue. But alas, the last 3 days of his trip it was still and sunny and he went hard out.
He was feeling generous and offered to do our side of the driveway as well. Aaron was adamant he was to do no such thing.
And so, he has gone once again and as we walk the dogs up the driveway the smell of dying vegetation permeates the air. But worst of all, knowing they’re going to die the weeds have gone into reproduction mode, hastily setting seed. Next summer our neighbour’s weed problem will be tenfold.
More Money Than Sense
With his water tank inadvertently drained by neighbour K, G went and talked to K and told him he was not to use his water. G was convinced K had done it maliciously. We tried to explain that K has no water collecting facility of his own and probably thought G’s water tank was constantly being filled by mother nature.
“I’m going to have it out with him” G said. It was his call, not our argument, so we left him to it.
When G next paid us a visit he had surprising news. K is planning to put his property on the market soon. He has only been here 18 months and in that time he has let his property grow wild and has used it as a rubbish dumping ground. He’s a nice enough, friendly guy but clearly K doesn’t feel a lot of love for his south-facing block with its complete lack of amenities.
G is stoked. He’s told K he wants to buy the block.
That would be great for us. We would then have no neighbours for nearly the entire year and a bit more grazing to boot. The catch though is that K paid the same money for his 2 acres as we did for our 10. For some crazy reason he paid twice the market value. We told G that K was unlikely to take much less than what he paid for it and with rural property prices down he’s unlikely to sell it anytime soon.
G said he’d happily pay the $120K to own it. Not because he actually wants the land but because he’s paranoid about getting ripped off by neighbours. The water incident helping to confirm his suspicions.
"That’s crazy” we said
“It’s worth it”
“That’s way too much money for that shitty block of land”
“It’s worth it to me”
We shut up at that point. We’re not stupid. If that shitty little 2 acres off our driveway sells for $120K twice in a short time, and in a recession, then that should push the value of our own property up.
G is mad, absolutely insane if he considers it. The only people who really stand to benefit from such a transaction are me and Aaron. We can only hope that G goes ahead with it.
6 January 2011
I have high hopes for this year but at the same time not great expectations.
There’s an awful sense of dread lingering at the back of my mind, wondering if we really have ditched the ‘If anything can go wrong it will’ problems of the previous 12 months.
So far it seems not.
Yesterday we discovered our septic tank had blown and we need a new motor. Our septic tank maintenance man told us he can get us a good cheap one with a repair cost of around $500. He told us we were lucky to get it repaired so cheap.
Lucky?? I just wanted to collapse on the ground and cry.
Only an hour before we’d sat down and worked out our budget for 2011 and discovered we anticipate spending more than we earn this year. So now, after struggling to figure out how to cut back our costs for this year we suddenly have to find another $500.
We went for a walk while the septic tank man drained our tank. My head was spinning with the thought of the $500 repair bill and then Aaron tells me he’d got a fine in December for not having a CoF. “Oh my God, another $200” I was thinking.
Wrong.
Make it $600!
Last year we spent roughly $24,000 on our vehicles alone. That included over $12,000 in fuel and over $9000 in purchase and repair. That amount equals more than my current salary. Just the thought of that much money being spent on vehicles makes me want to vomit.
My going part-time will reduce costs somewhat but with petrol prices climbing and the recent news that Peak Oil was reached in 2006, there’s little hope that our car expenses will improve.
And of course, the Caldina decided to get terminal everything just before Christmas so I’ve just had to buy another car! We paid $1750 for it 2 days ago.
The Caldina is still struggling on and at this stage we anticipate it will be our farm vehicle. However, we may need to consider selling it, just for the possible $1000 we may get for it.
Then there’s our holiday in April. We’re going to blow our budget severely this year.
I had hoped we could travel cheap around the UK via campsites with a 2 person tent but then one of our British guests advised us that unlike NZ camping sites, British camping sites do not offer extras like kitchen and laundry facilities.
I’m actually thinking that we’re going to end up just sleeping in our hire car most of the time. God knows what we’re going to eat but I suspect muesli every morning and pasta with tomato sauce every evening.
If we were financially responsible we would cancel the trip but it’s not as simple as that. Dad’s already paid for my air ticket and Jay & Bex have booked their flights over here. If we cancelled it it wouldn’t be just us who would be inconvenienced.
We both so desperately need a holiday but how are we going to manage it?
CouchSurfing is an option but I’m really struggling to be a nice person at the moment.
I worry that we will argue constantly about money while we’re away. Every penny will need to be spent wisely but my idea of wise is often different from Aaron’s.
The Glamourous Farmer
There’s just been too much doom and gloom in my world in the last year. My whole world has seemed ugly and tired. Despite the fact that we have so much to be grateful for, that thought is pushed so far to the back of my mind, that I am struggling to view life in anything but muted, grey tones.
Something has to change. I am not about to give up everything we’ve worked so hard for for the last 5 years, but I cannot carry on as we are. And so, I am taking inspiration from our ex HelpXer Clare, who last year arrived on our property fresh and enthusiastic to learn about farming while wearing a dress and wellies. A dress???
For 5 years I have farmed in track pants, sometimes shorts, and a variety of old tops. My farming wardrobe consists of virtually all black, grey and white, old, cotton items. I often feel ugly and frumpy and envious of female guests who turn up looking clean and colourful in their ‘I’m just visiting’ outfits.
This year that’s going to change. Mum gifted me $300 for Christmas. “Spend it on yourself” she said, and damnit, I will!
I am now addicted to $1.00 auctions on Trade Me. I am hunting down ball dresses and evening gowns I can wear around the farm.
Already I’ve bought 6 dresses but I realize now that I’ve spent the first $100 unwisely.
I’ve been so desperately unhappy over these Christmas holidays that I have made the fatal mistake of trying to buy happiness. I allowed myself to spend up to $20 per outfit but this has defeated the purpose of what I’m trying to achieve. I want 30-40 evening dresses I can choose from but instead I may only now end up with a dozen.
I also want to break away from dull black and boring white and wear only colours. So what did I do? Buy 2 dresses of grey and black! Idiot. Idiot…
I’ve got a whole year to buy dresses and I have tried to buy them all in the first week.
There really is only one thing for it; I need to clean out my own wardrobe and try sell stuff on Trade Me to fund my new lifestyle.
My wardrobe is in desperate need of a clean out so I just need to bite the bullet and do it.
I’m not sure about the practicality of my decision to farm in dresses yet. I’m thinking I may need to add some black tights to give my legs some protection, a wide elasticated belt to keep fabric reigned in, gumboots of course, and maybe plain white or black t-shirts to wear under anything with shoestring straps.
I imagine I’m going to possibly look interesting, definitely eccentric and hopefully just a little glamorous.
It was suggested to me I wear a tiara but I always wear a hat for sun or rain protection so I’m thinking a sparkly costume jewellery necklace of some description will be just the ticket. Again, I will be looking for a $1.00 Trade Me bargain.
Something To Look Forward To
I’m not sure where exactly the idea came from, or how it started, but I know it was pre-Kaiwaka.
Aaron and I checked out a few top of the range Motor Homes at a Home Show in Auckland I think, and we were instantly hooked by the idea of life on the road.
Not that it was feasible back then. We needed jobs and we wanted a house and then a farm.
And so we have a house and a farm and despite our love for this place, it is not forever. It was always a 20-year dream, and 5 years on it still is. This block of land on the side of a mountain is hard work. It’s for the fit and young, and although I am the former, at 40 I’m not really the latter. By the time I’m 55 I know my body will struggle to deal with the physical requirements this block demands.
We have talked often about when we leave here and that our next stage in life should be some travel. First we dreamed of a motorhome but we have slowly drifted away from that idea. As we have become more in tune with farming and more in love with the land our dreams of owning a motorhome have now become dreams of owning a house truck.
Not just any old house truck but something slightly eccentric, with a hint of gypsy to it.
I had thought we would just look for one for sale and buy the right one when we find it. There’s one on Trade Me for sale right now. It’s quite beautifully done and so very close to what we want. At only $65,000 and maybe another $10-15K to get it warrantable, it’s an affordable dream.
“Why not start from scratch?” Aaron proposed
“Are you mad? We don’t know the first thing about building”
“Who says we have to build it?”
We designed a house and had it built for us. Now we’ll design a house truck and have it built for us. We buy the engine and chassis. Get an engineer to build the framework and a builder to build the house.”
It all sounds too easy but then it’s so much smaller than an actual house that surely it can’t be as difficult?
So here’s the plan. From now until 2019 we pay off our mortgage. During that time we design our dream house truck. Once the mortgage is paid we save like mad for 2 years and then buy the engine and chassis. As money allows we get the framing done and then start the building. In 2023 we put the property on the market, giving ourselves 2-3 years to sell it and finish the house truck.
When the property is sold we hit the road and start looking for a 2-acre block of flattish land on which we can create a mini version of what we have here.
I’d like somewhere rural and quiet next time. We’ll need somewhere we can park the housetruck and where we can build a small building. I like the idea of the housetruck being our home and the building being an open plan art studio with a toilet, bathroom and a woodburning stove. A concrete floor, a few rugs and 2 or 3 sofa beds and we’ll be able to entertain and have guests come to stay.
And having the housetruck will mean we can just lock up and leave whenever we feel the urge to explore.
Perhaps with an art studio we may both feel inclined to create wonderful things that we can sell at art fairs around New Zealand, making ourselves a little pocket money along the way.
I don’t know about animals at this point. Aaron likes the idea of a few ducks, chickens and a pig but automatically that ties us to the land again.
I think we’ll be able to keep bees okay and Aaron has decided he’d like to incorporate a small chicken coop on our house truck so maybe a couple of chickens as well.
It’s all pie in the sky stuff at the moment but if we don’t dream it it won’t happen.
Where Have All The Babies Gone?
What a wonderful spring/summer we have had. All our ducks went broody as well as most of our chickens. Before Christmas there were baby ducklings and chicks galore.
Now we are left with just 4 chicks and 1 duckling.
It’s been disastrous. 10 beautiful bantam chicks quickly became 8 when mother bantam left the house after the babies hatched and refused to go back in. The 8 that survived only did so because they went looking for her. Then overnight 8 bantam chicks became none. Aaron and I are fairly confident it was one of the stoats we have seen running across the drive near the chicken run.
No doubt that was one chick for every stoat baby in a nest somewhere close by.
The ducklings were a mission to keep alive. They’re just so young and fragile and despite the amazingly high birth rate, there really is only one mother in the whole lot that actually keeps track oh her babies.
Initially with so many mothers and babies we though safety in numbers would do the trick. Wrong.
Several just went missing and we don’t know whether it was rats, cats, stoats or a combination of all 3. Several were abandoned by their mothers and just keeled over with shock.
The dam started to dry up in the drought, and then horror upon horrors, as the mothers walked across the mud to the quickly evaporating pond, the ducklings would get stuck in the mud and quickly succumb to shock and die. One morning I fed the ducks and counted the babies. An hour later I rechecked and 4 babies had disappeared. All of them were dead in the mud.
And so in desperation we caught 2 mothers and their ducklings and put them into the verandah enclosure. One coped wonderfully, raising 5 robust, healthy ducklings to 2 weeks of age. We released them into the duck run and one by one they disappeared. We thought at first it was the dogs, as they had taken to breaking into the run, but now we are fairly certain it’s another wild cat wreaking havoc and that the dogs were after the cat.
Only 1 duckling remains of the 5.
The other mother duck we caught turned on the babies as soon as she was released into the enclosure. She attacked them so viciously that I was left with no option but to grab her and let her go back into the duck paddock. I could only assume I grabbed the wrong mother during the initial capture.
And so, we had 5 orphaned babies in the enclosure and although they were seemingly adopted by the mother left in the enclosure, over the next 4 days each of them keeled over and died.
The Sussex chickens produced 8 lovely chicks. One of them somehow got buried under dirt and died. One of them got stuck outside the nest overnight and succumbed to the elements. Another, the most stunningly patterned of them all somehow managed to drown itself in a bucket of water, despite its inability to fly or jump. The last to die developed the same leg problems Laddy had originally. Once again I delayed removing it from its family and one day while I was in the coop looking for eggs, Whisky trotted around the outside of the coop, found the chick sitting somewhere in the vege garden and with a quick chomp ended its life.
2 of the Sussex hens went broody again but one of them laid all unfertilized eggs which then rotted in the summer heat. They subsequently exploded over several days and I was forced to remove what I could and bury the rest under a mound of dirt.
The smell of rotten egg is quite something else!
The other Sussex hen had her entire nest raided one night by rats and she lost all 7 eggs.
The wild chicken has disappeared for several weeks now, turning up only twice to share cheese with Mabel and Stanley. I had assumed she was broody and on a nest but I have seen no sign of chicks. Not that I would have any hope of them surviving though after all the disasters we’ve already had.
The bantam Mama Chick also disappeared and I was hopeful she would bring back some babies but she has returned to the chicken run today and there were no chicks with her.
All in all it’s been an absolute bloody disaster and we have no choice but to build a series of pest-proof broody houses in which we can raise chicks or ducklings with their mums until they reach about 4-6 weeks of age.
Trapped
We were incredibly slack last year with trapping. It’s amazing how disheartening trapping can be when you can go days without catching anything. We start off with a hiss and a roar but as the catches dwindle or the traps go off with nothing caught the enthusiasm wanes and suddenly we can’t find the time to set them anymore.
Yesterday we stopped procrastinating though. We walked around the property and gathered up the traps and then we cleaned them, baited them and set them up around the property again.
For now we are going to concentrate on cats, stoats and rats. We have 3 rat traps, 2 stoat traps and 4 cat/possum traps all armed and ready.
I checked them all this morning and there were no hits. I was gutted to say the least. I just wanted one dead cat. That’s all I was asking. One dead wild cat and I would have been happy. I shall blame the drizzly rain but I suspect it’s more to do with the smell of human on the boxes. We should have worn gloves but that’s only just occurred to me now.
I don’t like death or killing things but damnit, I want the pests to die! The birds not just our own but the natives as well are being decimated and it’s got to stop. Why is it so easy for the pests to survive? Why is it that last year all our own animals struggled to survive the chaotic and unpredictable weather but all the other pests seemed to thrive?
The only thing that struggled were the rabbits. We were suddenly finding them lying dead around the property and the timing couldn’t have been worse. It happened just when we seemed to be under attack from locals for our sister-in-law’s continued indiscretions and suddenly we found ourselves paranoid that someone was baiting dead rabbits to kill our dogs.
Fortunately our fears were wrong and we have since heard that a local or locals had released the calici virus in the area.
I am neither for or against this behaviour. I certainly understand it. With 2 summer droughts in a row we aren’t the only farm that has struggled to grow grass. If you make a living off pasture-fed animals and have to watch as rabbits eat your food source it must be more than a little disheartening.
I’m not upset that our rabbit population has dropped but maybe that is why our ducks and chickens are being targeted.
30 Dec 2010
Just 2 days to go and I can say goodbye to this year forever. Not a moment too soon may I say!
I hate to wish my life away but shit, how much can one person take in 1 year?
It’s not just been me either. I’ve spoken to so many people who have struggled with everything this year has thrown at them. I’m tired beyond tired, my body aches, I struggle to laugh and smile and my patience levels with anything and everything are shot to pieces.
And now it’s the Christmas holidays and as per usual, guests are coming and going.
There’s a lot of drinking and smoking and late nights and metal music and none of it is me. This year I’m struggling with it. It’s my holiday too and I don’t want to join in. I want to just drift through the days without caring about anyone but me. I want to be selfish and breathe only fresh country air and to just sit in quiet contemplation but of course there’s a certain amount of pressure to join in obviously. My need to just get up and walk away and sit in another room by myself is disconcerting for the guests but I’m past caring this year.
I have certainly not been the hostess with the mostest this year. By all means come into my home, make yourself comfortable, relax, kick back but don’t expect me to participate.
I know it’s hard for Aaron. Erik and Bettina are here for a week or so and the expectation is that I will be on my best behaviour but it’s not happening. It has nothing to do with them, I’m just exhausted.
A Quiet Life
The farm is fairly quiet now. Our plans to cull or sell pigs happened, and then we sold most of our latest piglets as weaners. About the only change to our plans was to keep Mabel. In the end I couldn’t let her go. We have reached a good stage in our relationship and I know she likes me and trusts me now.
We were due a set of piglets early this month but I am not sure what has gone wrong. Just as Phyllis struggled to get pregnant last year, Joy is also going through a phase. She doesn’t seem to be coming into heat. We had thought she was pregnant but this was not the case. She’s a little overweight but not obese. The diet is good, so I’m not sure what the issue is.
Not that we’re stressed about it. The pig farming dream died an unexpected death and so there’s no pressure on us now to breed.
However, because Joy was not pregnant we removed the electric wire between Arthur and the girls. It took 2 weeks for the pigs to dare to cross that invisible line between the standards and then Phyllis came into heat and she took the first step into Arthur’s territory. We assume she is pregnant but still there is nothing happening with Joy.
We have kept Mabel and Stanley separated but then Mabel came into heat on 12 December, Emily’s 3 boys got terribly randy, pushed under the fence and now I fear she may also be pregnant. The boys are only 4 months old but they were persistent in chasing Mabel around the paddock.
And so after the heat we opened the gate between Mabel and Stanley and now the 2 keep each other company. The plan is to separate them again just before Mabels comes into heat again.
Trouble in Paradise
The 3 saddleback boys started causing problems a few weeks ago by suddenly starting to escape and explore the property. That in itself is not so bad but they eventually found Arthur and family and started regularly visiting. The adults would chase them away if they got too near but then they started ganging up on Phyllis’ son ‘Piglet’.
Piglet has quickly become a permanent fixture around the shed and spends many hours with us and the dogs. He was doing just fine by himself but one day he followed us down the drive, met the saddleback boys and for some reason decided to take them all on through the fence.
The saddleback boys then seemed to have decided to hunt him down and harass him on a regular basis. Fortunately Piglet is a generously sized pig and the Saddleback picking the fights, though feisty, is the smallest piglet. Piglet holds his ground but tries to avoid confrontation at all costs. And so, as we were regularly trying to break up fights we decided enough was enough and the saddleback boys are now safely (and hopefully permanently) behind electric wire.
This has also solved one other problem – Whiskey’s piglet fixation. Once the saddleback boys started escaping so did Whisky. Every opportunity he could find he would trot down the hill to find the piglets. Then he would follow them wherever they went, sniffing, licking and no doubt humping for as long as he could get away with.
Last week Whisky disappeared for over an hour. Coppa and I searched the property and Gary’s and then up into the bush. I called and called and whistled and then started to panic; had he fallen into a hole? drowned in the stream? escaped onto the highway? been kidnapped by a stranger? Would he be gone forever and I would never know what happened to him?!? I was a parent quickly becoming distraught.
This was Whisky, our obedient dog who always comes when he calls. And then it occurred to me that the piglets were also missing. They’d been hanging around Naniwha Hill lately so Coppa and I went for a walk around the base.
They were there and so was Whisky. I know Whisky heard me and I am gobsmacked he actually chose to ignore me.
Coppa has been a most obedient dog the last couple of weeks so it worries me that Whisky is possibly putting his alpha status at risk by letting himself get into so much trouble.
As for Piglet, he continues to spend his time hanging around the shed or behind it, staring longingly at the coolstore door but he is growing bigger by the day. As much as I love his company, he must be close to 50kg and that’s starting to cause a few problems, especially when we’re making meals. He has absolutely no problem launching himself at crates of veges, knocking them over and spilling the contents across the floor.
He can also launch himself upwards so that he can get his front trotters on the table, where he can knock feed buckets off the table or even grab bags of cheese.
Still, even with these minor problems, having so few pigs on the land has given us a welcome respite from the usual time consuming pig farming work.
