Retirement

After long and careful consideration we decided that it is not fair on Doris to keep her with the herd. We are looking for a forever home for her where she can retire and spend the rest of her days snoozing in the sun or cuddling up with a companion in a lovely warm house.

Day 4

Whilst mum is having her breakfast Barney takes a nap in the sun....

Surprise of the day !

 

I did wonder why Doris wasn't coming out for her dinner...

And there she was with 2 tiny piglets !

Angy is here

Finally Angy has arrived.
She didn't like being in the crate and tried to dismantle it for most of the journey.

Finally out of the crate, getting lost in the green stuff.

Look, I found water, dad.

Dad, she's not sharing her food with me !

Angy got accepted quickly and joined the line of piled up piglets.

Gretel's first litter

Last night Gretel had her first litter of beautiful little piglets. She had eight but one did not make it. The remaining seven all seem fine, wriggling about like little worms.

A wife for Hans

I have been looking for a nice ginger girl for our registered boar Hans. Although we have 2 girls for him it seemed a shame not to be able to register any of the offspring.
Thankfully a nice lady in Yorkshire has decided to let me have a perfect little gilt that she was going to keep herself. She was named Angy and we will be able to pick her up on the 12th of June...

Happy piggies

Ann's been cutting the lawn and rather than adding the grass to the compost heap we decided to feed it to the pigs. As Kune Kune's are grazing pigs they loved it and it will be part of their diet all through the summer.

Winter time....

It's wet and cold and muddy.
Even pigs don't like it...

Making a pig feeder

After looking at commercial pig feeders and their prices I decided to make my own a while back.
In good old low impact fashion I used pallet wood. What else? I also had a plastic tray that I bought for plants a long time ago when we had a small garden, which wasn't used any more.

The piglets loved it so much they stood in it and shoved each other out the way.

So I added a board in the middle, which worked much better.

Eventually the pigs grew bigger and bigger until the were too big to stand in their feeder....

Softy

Hans, our new kune kune boar is a big softy.

Here he is putting his head into my hand. If I would let him he would climb onto my lap for a cuddle.

Into the big wide world

After several weeks in the holding pen the piglets are finally moving into their new field.

First we had to strim down the grass in the field for the electric netting. This alone took 2 weeks. Next the fencing was erected. (The white spot in the middle is Chris.)

Some old scrap wood was used to make a station for the battery and the energizer. Originally built by volunteers it was unusable and our son rebuilt it to make it weather proof.

We persuaded Ulla, Gretel and Hans (left to right) into the trailer with a little food where they promptly chewed up the floor.

Coming out of the trailer they didn't need any persuasion. Here is Hans jumping off the side of the ramp.

Ulla is off to inspect the green stuff. Their holding pen didn't have any grass left after 3 days...

There is so much room to run around in.... but only one thing they are interested in...food.

Hey daddy, I found it !

Tastes sooo much better out here.

I am sure there is some more here somewhere....

Wow, what a big water dish !  (We placed stones inside so they don't climb into it.)

See you later dad.

We have plans to extend the fence line by another 50m.

Piglets

Our weaners have arrived. Hans (coloured) and Ulla (black) came up from Brora and are both birth registered. They are 8 weeks old and although they are friendly enough they are a tiny bit vary of people.
Gretel came from Stoke-on-Trent and at 3 month old she is bigger than Hans and Ulla. Gretel is the most relaxed piglet you can think of. She doesn't mind being touched at all and has a very laid back character.

Building a Pig Ark

The pigs, now named Doris and Boris, have had their quibbles but recently Boris has been bullying Doris and not leaving her in peace at all. Separation seems to be the answer which means building a pig ark for Doris.

Andy (helpX) quickly gets to work, taking pallets apart. until there is nothing left of it.

Broken bits are discarded for now and the cross bars are freed of nails.

The pile of timber is graded into thickness and the remaining nails taken out.

We end up with a nice neat pile of timber, so let's get to work.

First the timber is nailed back onto the cross bars, but this time evenly spaced out. One of the cross bars sits neatly in the gap whilst the timber is nailed on, then moves to the next gap...

Quickly enough a new structure is made that looks like a neat version of a pallet.

To make it all waterproof another layer of timber is nailed over the gaps.

After making two of those overlapping boards they are screwed together at a 90 degree angle to form a triangular pig ark.

The front needs a door and the back filling in completely.

First Andy (helpx) thinks about the how and why.

Then Chris tries his hand at measuring, marking and sawing...

Getting there... just a few more and the back will be finished.

The next day Chris (family) fills in the front. Doris will be thankful to him as she had to move in swiftly last night.

Chris does a rather good job and the ark looks brilliant. Doris agrees and after inspecting the new door she goes for a snooze around the back.