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Continuing with the story of the piglets, after a few days Daisy became less precious about her babies and the OH managed to take the dead piglets away. Then she would come away to eat and we were able to see what we had got, 4 females and 2 males.
The book explained how to castrate the little boys but we didn't like the sound of it, no anaesthetic and the swift use of a scalpel. We could of course have taken them to the vet but I'm afraid cost has to be considered.
We decided to overcome the castration problem in what we thought was a fairly novel way. We would EAT them before they got too big, ie as suckling pigs. We arranged for our friendly retired butcher to come and slaughter them. However we didn't want Daisy to know what was happening to them and we were worried about Daisy's reaction if she heard them squealing, we could imagine her chasing us and the butcher until she got them back, and an angry pig is not to be trifled with.
Another novel solution was required, the answer was to take them out of her earshot. SIMPLE!!! Well not that simple actually. What we came up with was to load them up in our stock box and drive them into the wood, where we would get the butcher to do the deed!
The only problem was explaining to the butcher that we wanted him to go into the woods with us!!!!! He looked somewhat bemused at us not wanting Daisy to be upset but luckily he had got used to our strange English ways and was happy to do as requested. We had 2 lovely suckling pigs which we popped in the freezer until we were ready to eat them, and Daisy still had her 4 little girls to look after.
The photo was taken shortly before the boys had to leave, they were enjoying a family wallow in the mud. Some friends wanted 2 piglets to fatten for themselves which would leave us with 2, perfect as this meant none of the piglets would have to go to the abattoir!! The only difficulty would be getting them away from Mum.
Yet another novel solution would be required but it was going to prove much more problematic. See the next post for our ingenious efforts and whether they worked!!!
4 comments:
Well,how did you cook them. I have images of apple in mouth ...... I can't wait for the next installment :-)
For some reason, it strikes me as odd that you thought eating the little piggies was better than castrating them!!!!
I don't think I'm cut out for life as a farmer!!
Thanks again for the warts and all clarity, which makes such a tale of rural utopia real, otherwise it would be too twee. We've taken delivery of our sheep: a ram, ewe and male lamb. The other ewe had died before we could pick her up so we will collect another male lamb when it's a bit older and we're on the lookout for another ewe with her lamb. We want company for the ram when he can't be in the field with the ewes, so will have one of the boys castrated: a wether, I think that's called? We'll then eat the other but, as they are so small, he might need a few more months to fatten up sufficiently, so we will have to have him castrated by the vet, despite the cost. Boys and their balls, eh? what trouble!
Hello!!!Like the blog!
Don't worry about castrating next time! We keep our porkers together until they get done in at about 5-6 months and generally there is no problem........most of my friends with pigs do it this way too. After that age its better to separate them....!
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