Raising Pigs

Back in the "old days", people called pigs "mortgage lifters".  Apparently, raising pigs is supposed to be so profitable that you can drop all your other responsibilities and know that your house payment will still be made.  I have a different title for the little bristly freight trains... fascinating, funny, fear-erasing, bruise makers.

We raise a rare heritage breed of pig.  They are called Mulefooted pigs.  Mulefoots are black (red and spotted ones are considered extinct, although we have a red one) and have feet that look like a mule's hoof rather than the cloven foot of others in their family line.  They grow to be enormous!  I don't have an animal scale, but our adults are thought to be right around 400 pounds and they are just one year old.  They stretch out to be almost the length between two of our fence posts (don't you love my way of measuring?) and make a noise that sounds like a bear about to attack.  It is easy to be intimidated by these overgrown Labradors, especially if you're a girl and you have to get something out of the boar's pen and he's feeling frisky.  God is using my project to help me overcome some nasty fears I didn't even know I had.

Recently, we had a batch of piggies born here at Abu Peak Ranch (I'll explain the name of our ranch later).  A couple of days ago, we decided to move the mother and her young over to the big pen where the boar was and move him to the smaller pen they were now vacating.  We had done this before, when there were only two pigs, and it was quite successful.  The plan was to simply make a narrow path, using old wire fencing that was laying around, and create a shoot for them to travel from one pen to the next.  The problem was going to be getting everyone to end up in the right place since they had to pass each other in the shoot.

In my mind, this plan ran like clock work.  I would send the boar over and then open the sows gate,  He would run in and be so curious about the new surroundings that I could scoot the sow out and her babies would follow.  She would happily trot over to the new field full of fresh grass (her personal favorite), both pens would be closed and locked and I'd go inside and have a glass of lemonade.  Somehow, the plan in my head translated to bruises on both my and my husbands bodies after spending hours re-enacting what looked like a scene from The Three Stooges. 

We were able to move the boar just fine.  He and my husband have a mano-e-mano relationship.  They both mutually respect the other because I believe that deep down, they both think they could take the other out immediately, if need be.  The problem presented when the boar caught wind of (literally) his old pen-mate.  I guess I thought that pigs were like nursing women... they rarely had to worry about getting pregnant because who wants sex when you have babies hanging on your breasts all day.  I was wrong!

Fast forward to the scene where both pigs are enjoying their "after encounter" cigarettes.  We finally managed to move the sow, but her babies wouldn't follow.  They were too interested in their estranged father who recently came into the picture.  Now we had to move the boar back in hopes that the little ones would follow.  They didn't.  Plan "B", catch the piggies and move them in a dog crate.

I could hear the imaginary narrator, in my head, announce, "Let the bruising begin!"  If it wasn't so painful, it could have been the runner up for Funniest Home Videos.  Pigs are fast, and greased or not, they are hard to catch.  I won't bore you with the details, but did I mention that my husband and I are both over 50?  Now you get a better picture of how we must have looked.  Cut to the end... everyone ended up where they needed to be and we took out stock in the BenGay pharmaceutical line.  I had to skip the lemonade and go straight for a beer.