The Three Little Pigs

Once upon a time there was a pig called Whitney, she was moved to a new home with her sister Wrinkles.  The two sisters were very frightened, they didn't know these new people and they wanted to be back in their own home with their usual humans.  So they escaped and ran away....they managed to run about a kilometre away from their new home, but then the track ran out and they didn't know which way to go.  

They decided to build their home near the end of the track, they made it from bracken.  For the first 3-4 weeks they enjoyed their freedom, the sun was shining, there was lots to eat, they could wallow in the mud pools that collected at the side of the track.  Then Wrinkles lost her sister, she couldn't find her anywhere, she got very lonely. The humans kept going past on the track in their car, often they would throw her food; cakes and pig nuts.  After a week or two of being on her own Wrinkles decided that the new humans weren't so bad, they seemed quite kind, she started following them down the track when they threw food for her.  She couldn't understand why she was always so hungry, no matter how much she ate.  One day she followed the human called Kim halfway down the track and into a small area with stone walls, Kim poured a bucket of pig nuts onto the floor...she was too hungry, it was too tempting.  Before Wrinkles knew what was happening Kim had closed the big wooden gate on her and she was trapped. Wrinkles was quite relieved, she was tired of running away from the human's pet dogs, she was hungry all the time and lonely without Whitney.  Over the next few weeks Wrinkles got very settled in her new home. Kim brought her food and water at least twice a day, she had a paddling pool to wallow in.

A couple of weeks later Whitney found her way back to their bracken home near the top of the track, she had disappeared because she had to find somewhere safe to have her piglets, somewhere the human's pet dogs wouldn't bother her.  Whitney arrived back with her three little piglets, but Wrinkles was nowhere to be seen.  For weeks the family stayed around the top of the track hoping that Wrinkles would return. Whitney wanted to search for her sister but she knew the little piglets weren't strong enough, so she waited.  Eventually as the piglets grew stronger they started to venture down the track and they found Wrinkles trapped in a pen half way down the track.  A couple of weeks after Whitney started visiting her sister in the pen, she arrived to find that she was now an aunty to seven little piglets. Every day Whitney and her family would visit, Wrinkles told them that the new people were ok, that they looked after her well.  Kim started leaving food for Wrinkles and the three little pigs, but still they were a bit scared of her and they hated it when the dogs discovered them, they chased them all the way back to the top of the track.  

One day Kim heard the dogs barking near the pen, she shouted the dogs back to the house because she guessed they were bothering Whitney and the piglets. Once the dogs were tied up she went off to take the pigs their food. As Kim rounded the corner and the pen came into view she could see Whitney waiting for her dinner, but then she spotted Wrinkles outside the pen, she nearly dropped the buckets with shock, how did she get out?  Kims initial reaction was that the two of them plus the three little pigs would run off, the gate to the pen was wide open and the seven tiny piglets were wiggling around just inside the gate, trying to find their mum. Kim walked slowly into the pen with the buckets of food and waited for what seemed like ages, hoping that Wrinkles wouldn't run off and leave her babies. Slowly she tipped the buckets of food onto the floor in the middle of the pen, Wrinkles made up her mind and dashed back into the pen followed quickly by Whitney. Kim slowly moved to the gate and closed it, the two sisters were now in the pen with Wrinkles seven piglets, but what about the three little pigs?

Kim knew they had hidden in the bracken opposite the pen, she also knew that there was no way she would be able to catch them, what would happen now, would Whitney try to escape from the pen to be with her piglets?  Kim had noticed that Whitney had a bite mark on her thigh and guessed that one of the dogs had done this, no wonder the poor pig had surrendered and decided to join her sister, but it was a shock that she had left her piglets behind.  Kim assumed that Wrinkles had stormed the gate of the pen to help her sister when she was being attacked by the dogs.

Kim didn't sleep much that night, worried about the dogs chasing the three little pigs, worried about how they would survive, wondering how she could reunite them with their mum.  The next morning she went up to the pen expecting the gate to be broken and the pigs gone, and what a surprise, all twelve of the pigs were in the pen, the three little pigs had managed to squeeze through a gap in the chicken wire and then through the pig mesh and were safe and sound and happily reunited with their mum, aunty and cousins.

Whitney looking extremely skinny but reunited with her piglets, nephews and nieces

Update; I am very pleased to say that Whitney has put on weight since being in the pen and looks much healthier, latest picture below, she is the pig on the right.

Births, Deaths and Marriages...

It has been a month since I last wrote my blog, I have discovered in that time that life on a farm is a roller coaster!  It has been a month of highs and lows.  We have had births, deaths and marriages!

Deaths
About three weeks ago I found one of the lambs laying down on its side in the field, this is most unusual, sheep lie down on their tummies with their legs tucked under them.  I went down to check and he didn't move, I thought he was dead but then noticed his eyes moving.  I picked him up and moved him into another field away from the others, gave him hay and water but I realised he was a gonna, he couldn't hold his head up, was scouring (diarrhea) - if you are squeamish move on to the next paragraph.  I tried cleaning him up and then discovered thousands of maggots crawling about his back end, he had blow fly, probably the worst sickness a sheep can get.  I rang our friend Don and asked him what to do, he didn't think he would last until the morning and I had to agree that he was probably right.  Next morning he was dead.  I gave all the goats and sheep an oral dose of Cydectine, which is for internal parasites. 

A day or so later I noticed that one of the goats was scouring and had lost a lot of weight.  My friend Denise was coming over to give the goats their annual injection of Coglavax, which is for the prevention of Clostridial infections. Clostridial diseases are caused by anaerobic bacteria that are in the environment, particularly in soil, the disease is quite often fatal. I have never given injections before, I am terrified of injections, but I knew that I had to get over my fear if I was to keep animals, I managed to do one injection.

 I contacted the vet to see if I needed to do anything else.  The vet diagnosed Liver Fluke based on the fact that the diarrhea was green and the animals were on damp pasture.  All my animals were brought to our farm within six weeks of each other and we didn't have a history of vaccinations for some of them.  I now know that I should have dosed them with everything immediately and it would have been sensible to keep them all separate for at least a month after each arrival, in effect keeping each set in isolation, however even if I had known this I didn't have the facilities available to do this.  The vet wrote a list of various vaccines available to combat Liver Fluke and suggested I contact a neighbour with sheep to ask to buy some from him, this is because he sells the vaccine with enough for 60 sheep, I only had 6 plus the 5 goats.  The vet also wrote out the dose to give each animal based on their weight (more of that later).  My neighbour with the sheep wasn't in so I contacted my good friends Doug and Rhoda at La vie à la petite ferme, they had a vaccine called Oestrocur and Doug kindly offered to come and help me vaccinate the goats and sheep.  I would not have been able to do the vaccinations without Dougs help, it is definitely a two man job. I was shaking like a leaf as I gave the injections, but we managed to do the sheep and then moved on to the goats.  Two bits of advice here;

1. For adult standard size goats you need somebody strong to keep hold of them, they tend to move as soon as the injection goes in, pulling the needle out or bending it.  The best way to keep them still is to straddle them and hold onto their horns.
2. Make sure with sheep that you have an animal marker to mark the ones you have done, not so much a problem with goats as they are usually quite distinctive. My sheep are all the same breed and there were three that looked very similar

Unfortunately my inexperience caused another problem. The vet had written down quantities of treatment, although he hadn't written down Oestrocur as one of the treatments.  Doug commented that the amount we were giving was much more than they had given and more than it said in the instructions, I assumed this was because the animals already had the disease rather than the treatment being preventative.  Wrong, I overdosed them.  Another lamb died a few days later and I will never know if this was because of the overdose of treatment or because she had already succumbed to the disease.  Well life has to go on, the remaining sheep were moved to new pasture and seem to be thriving. I am no longer putting them directly on the pasture the goats have been on.  Henry the goat also had the illness but has made a great recovery, he is very skinny but I am tether grazing him on fresh land each day and hopefully he will soon gain back the weight he lost.

Births

Well as I have said, there is never a dull moment. Within a week of the lambs dying, our sow Wrinkles finally gave birth to seven healthy piglets, unfortunately there was one stillborn, but the seven seem happy and healthy.  Within hours of their birth the piglets were up and about, slightly wobbly on their feet but moving around much more than I thought they would be.  I had to dash off to buy chicken wire to put on top of the pig wire because they are so small they can fit through the gaps in the pen fencing.  

Wrinkles feeding the piglets a few hours after their birth

They were born two weeks ago, and it is amazing how much they have grown!  Here is a photo of them a few days ago with their cousins 'The Three Little Pigs'...more on them later.

The ten piglets playing together 29th September 2013

Marriages

Well all I can say on this subject is that Bandit the goat has eyes only for Maisy....they are acting like a pair of newly weds, lets hope we will hear the patter of tiny goat feet in the spring.

Next blog....The Tale of the Three Little Pigs!