What a Pig Sty!

When our pigs Whitney and Wrinkles arrived chez nous we had this naive idea that we would pop them in a paddock with electric fencing and they would be happy as...well pigs in mud. We placed the cages we used to transport them inside the fence, opened them and off they ran, straight through the fence and they just kept running. It took us a month to persuade them to come back.  In that month we set about building an escape proof pig pen, see 'Wanted Dead or Alive' blog post. In this time Whitney had her piglets, they were born free, a few weeks after she decided freedom wasn't such a great thing with three mouths to feed, she kept hanging around the pig pen which Wrinkles was already occupying, so I opened the gate and she gave herself up.  Things quickly settled down once we got the pigs in the pig pen. Wrinkles, Whitney and the three little pigs were soon joined by Wrinkles seven piglets!  

Argh, what a lovely story, at this point I should say "and they all lived happily ever after", but I would be lying. Of the ten piglets, there are three males (we were very lucky there were only three), the boys need to be separated from the girls preferably before they are three months old, although opinion seems to be divided on exactly what age they are capable of reproducing.  Having not long finished one pig pen, we had to then start building another to put the boys in.   We decided that the best position for the new pen was right next to the existing one, this makes pig keeping easier, I wanted to incorporate a way to transfer pigs between the two pens easily. I pondered the design of the new pen for some time. First we needed a pig size doorway between the two areas, the pig pens are in the ruin of an old farm house, therefore the walls are dry stone, not the easiest of materials to try to put an opening in, but Steve thought we could do it and there didn't seem any other way.  Knocking out the doorway couldn't proceed until we had a way to close it off again immediately, otherwise the pigs would be able to escape from their existing pen.  We decided that a sliding door would be the best option and Steve set about making a door with a handle to pull it upwards and a catch to hold it in place when it was in the open position.  We could then knock through. As I guessed, this was not straight forward, the wall above the doorway started to collapse and we quickly had to add lintels on both sides and then build the wall above these back up.  Whilst we were working on the doorway we moved massive boulders to block up the hole so the pigs couldn't use the doorway before we had the new pen completed. I then decided that what we needed was some sort of holding pen, we couldn't choose which pigs went through the door but if we had a holding area we could then pick out the ones we wanted. A lot of our gates, fences and animal shelters are built with pallets because they are often free and very sturdy.  We worked out that five one meter pallets would give us a holding area of one meter wide by two meters long, two pallets down each side attached to the wall where the doorway is and then the pallet at the opposite end would be hinged and bolted to make a gate. See picture below.  The gate looks a bit skew-wif because the ground is on a slope.

Inner Holding Area Pen

During this time I also started re-building the back and side walls of the area, first I tried dry-stone walling but it just kept falling down, then I decided to cement the wall, this was better but at the time the weather was fairly cold and often the cement didn't set properly or it was very brittle because the temperatures were too low.  I persevered but it was slow going, I managed to build the walls up to about one meter and then decided to put pig mesh fencing on the inside in some areas just to be sure the pen was pig proof. Once all this was done we then added another pallet gate for access to the main sty. Pictures of the  finished pen.

Outer gate and side of holding pen

Back and side walls with mesh fencing

Inner holding pen

Finally we could attempt to separate the boys and girls.  I spent a week just opening the door and throwing food into the holding pen so that the piglets would get use to going in there, this worked very well apart from Wrinkles deciding she wanted to check out the new accommodation too, she kept sticking her head through the doorway and blocking the way for the piglets to get in, one time she managed to knock the door out of its holding and emergency repair work had to be carried out. 

The holding pen has definitely been a success, although getting all of the pigs you want in there at the same time is not easy. We managed to get two of the three males in there at the same time along with a couple of the girls, at this point I closed the door to the other pen off, the gate at the opposite end was already locked and I wasn't going to open it incase they made a run for it, I just climb over into the holding pen and then grab the piglets I want by the back legs, there isn't anywhere for them to run so it makes it much easier. I lifted the two boys over the inner pen and popped them down in their new sty.  Re-opening the door between the two pens allowed the girls to go back to their own sty.  The third boy was a bit of a mummies boy and wouldn't leave Wrinkles to come through to the new section, so we had to chase him around and catch him rather than use the holding pen.  We have also used the holding pen to capture one of the girls when we sold her and to capture two more ready to go to the abattoir.  More on our trip to the abattoir in the next blog post.

Do you keep pigs?  How do you manage moving them around your holding?  Every time I watch a dvd or video of pigs they are calmly plodding about with their owner, usually the owner has a board and stick or a bucket of food, that is it.  Our pigs are not calm, they are not particularly friendly (at least the piglets aren't, the mums aren't too bad they will eat out of my hand and come to the fence to say hello), they are fine unless we try to go into their pen then they start running around and panicking.  Trying to clean out the pen is a nightmare with pigs running about all over the place squealing!  I have noticed since we separated the boys that they are much calmer, perhaps it is because there are only three in a pen. It will be interesting to see if the girls become calmer when there are less of them.  When we get down to two piglets and the two mums I am going to attempt to train them with a board and stick, could be interesting or a total disaster, I will let you know how it goes.  In the meantime if you keep pigs and you have any helpful tips please pass them on.

Registered At Last

After months of toing and froing, I am finally registered as a smallholder in France.  The process itself was not too complicated, but the lady that dealt with me seemed to be quite new to the job and made a couple of mistakes which delayed things.

First Step
The first stage in the process was a visit to the DDCSPP - Direction Départmentale de la Cohésion Sociale et e la Protection des Populations.....Sub-department, Service de la Santé et de la Protection Animales!  I took myself off into Tarbes one day and eventually found the offices.I spoke to a lovely girl who seemed completely puzzled as to why I was there, I showed her the procedure document which had been printed off the web. First I was told they couldn't do anything at that time as they were in the process of moving offices, I asked where they were moving to so I could find them when I returned, they were moving up one flight of stairs! Eventually I got her to photocopy my paperwork and open my dossier, someone would contact me the next week.....they never did.

Step Two
According to the procedure document I had, the next stage was to go to the Establissement de l' Elevage (EdE). Having heard nothing from the DDCSPP, I decided to take matters into my own hands and go directly to this office to see if I could get any further. The lady at the EdE explained that there had been many changes to the procedures and that I didn't need to go to the DDCSPP, she seemed very efficient, asked me what animals I had and then filled in a load of forms for me and asked me for a cheque for €15, a very reasonable sum I thought. I asked how long the procedure would take and she replied a couple of weeks and that I should receive my documents in the post, she then gave me a whole forest worth of paperwork to read. I was so pleased, it all seemed so simple and straightforward, not at all like it usually is in France.  The only identification they asked for was proof of address.

Non-Commercial Farmer
I should point out at this stage that I was registering as a non-commercial farmer, the meat from the animals I rear is for our consumption and not to be sold. I registered as a breeder of pigs, sheep and goats. I have a CHEPTAL number, which is used for the identification of my animals, but I don't have a SIRET number because I am not a commercial farmer.

Commercial Farmer
I understand that to register as a commercial farmer you need to go to the Chamber of Agriculture (which the EdE is a department of),  you will need a qualification or to prove that you have a number of years experience (I think it is five) working in a farming capacity, you can then register as a 'Cotisant Solidaire'. You can read more about the Cotisant Solidare here (sorry in French). Another way to register if you don't have the qualifications or experience is to find someone that has a diploma in agriculture and set up the French equivalent of a company with them, they can either work in the business or be a sleeping partner/director.  I understand that there are further restrictions relating to registering as a commercial farmer, these are related to the percentage of your income that is derived from farming activities, but I don't know the details.

Delays
A week after I visited the EdE I received a phone call from the lady that dealt with me, she apologised for having made a mistake, I should have paid €30 not €15. I still have no idea what these payments are for but it seems to relate to the number of species of animals kept; goats and sheep are one category, pigs are completely separate.  I drove the 40 kilometer round trip back to the office to pay the difference. Whilst there I asked for my CHEPTEL number and also whether I needed to order ear tags or they ordered them.  The lady was happy to fill out my order for the tags and I asked for the tattoo equipment for the pigs as I was under the impression that the pigs needed both an ear tag and tattoo to go to the abattoir. This turned out to be my mistake, they can have either one or the other.  The tattoo equipment is very expensive, but I am glad we ordered this as I think it will be much easier to tattoo the pigs than to do the ear tags.  I paid the huge amount of €131.90 for the tags and tattoo equipment! 

I left the office expecting to receive a parcel and documents within a couple of weeks.  A week later I got another call, another mistake, they had charged me the wrong amount, could I bring in a revised cheque.  I thought they said I had paid thirty cents too little.  I was very annoyed at the thought of having to drive another 40 kilometer round trip to pay thirty cents.  As it turned out Steve was going to Tarbes a couple of days later so he went to the EdE office.  It turned out I had paid thirty cents too much and they delayed the order because of this, grrhhhh.

Delivery At Last

Finally on Tuesday I received a parcel, inside was the tattooing equipment but no tags. I still haven't received any documentation from EdE.  I telephoned EdE and they explained that the tattooing and tagging equipment come from different places, the tags take about three weeks.  But as I only need to tattoo the pigs I can go ahead with organising for them to go to the abattoir.  Strangely enough the identification number for the pigs bares no resembles to the CHEPTEL number I have been given, I asked the lady about this and she said, no they are completely separate registrations. I also have two different types of movement forms; one for pigs and one for sheep and goats!  I will scan all the documents I have been given and post them on my blog at some point.

Update

Yesterday I went to the abattoir and spoke to a lovely lady. I can take the pigs on a Monday or Wednesday morning between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m.!  Looks like Steve and I will be chasing pigs again on Sunday afternoon.  I will let you know how it all goes.

The Silly Season

We have had a very busy few days here, carrying out routine tasks and doing extra jobs caused by the bizarre behaviour of some of the animals! A few months ago a friend of mine who also keeps animals said to me "wait until the silly season starts",now I know what she was talking about.

So what is it that is causing this 'silly season'? Hormones of course.  In the last few months Bandit our uncastrated male goat has gone from a reasonably sweet tempered (for a male goat) animal to causing havoc and annoyance wherever and whenever possible. This bad behaviour is aimed at the animals and us. For the last few months Bandit has insisted on showing the girls who is boss, by making a strange gutteral noise at them, pushing them along with his nose or head and kicking them with one front leg. I have been trying to get a video of the kicking because it is quite funny, he doesn't hurt the others, he just seems to be bossing them about. I think we might have to get Bandit a football to kick, perhaps we could teach all the goats and sheep to kick a ball and set up a match between the two sets of animals.

Bandit has also insisted over the last few weeks in interfering in everything I am trying to do, if he could talk I am sure he would be saying "no,you don't want to be doing it like that", sometimes this behaviour is funny, for example I was moving the sheep fence and every time I pushed one of the uprights into the ground he would come along behind me and pull it back out, this was very annoying for me, but would have made a great video for one of those funny shows on tv.

Unfortunately Bandit has also decided to interfere when I am trying to give Maisie her injections, it is difficult enough to give a goat an injection on your own without having another goat sticking his head in the way, trying to get the bottle of antibiotics or worse still  the needle because he thinks it is something nice to eat.  The other  day I turned around to find he had taken my rucksack and was pulling all the contents out and trying to eat it.

As for the sheep, their recent behaviour has been even more bizarre because they are usually so placid and well behaved.  Last week they escaped from their fenced area about three times so I thought they needed to be moved to new pasture. I moved them and within hours they had escaped again, admittedly the fence wasn't electrified but we haven't needed to use electric for months because they have been so good. I rounded  them up and put them back in. A few hours later I rounded them up again, this time I noticed that two of the rams were pushing into each other quite a lot.  The next morning Steve and I went down to find Col our largest and oldest ram completely tangled up in the fence, very strange as he is a very wise sheep, he is very good at getting the other horned ram to pull down the fence getting tangled in it in the process, then Col just steps over it. We untangled him fixed the fence and went off to do other jobs.  At this point I decided that we ought to connect the electric fence equipment, although I knew we wouldn't get time that day. When we went back in the evening the sheep were gone again, we found them up on a ridge (some of our land is terraced because it is so steep), as we went to retrieve them, we could see Col and Mint running along the top of the ridge smacking into each other with the other three sheep standing watching, in my imagination the three viewing this scene were shouting "fight, fight", like kids at school do. This amusing thought didn't last very long because just at that moment Col rammed Mint off the top of the ledge and he fell 2 metres, luckily his fall was broken by the huge bramble bushes that grow in this area. Immediately after doing this Col decided to attempt suicide by throwing himself off the ledge, he also fell into the brambles. By this point it was dusk, but we knew we had to get the two rams out of the brambles and check they hadn't injured themselves seriously.  If sheep get stuck they stop moving around and can die quite quickly, particularly at night and in the cold. I moved the spectators  back to their enclosure then went back to the top of the ridge to direct Steve to the area I had seen them go over, Steve hacked his way through the brambles, these are no ordinary brambles, they are thickets that have been growing unchecked for many years, they are taller than us.  By this point it was semi darkness and I was struggling to see anything, both sheep weren't moving, but eventually we heard a slight movement and Steve located Mint, cut him out and amazingly there was no damage.  Another twenty minutes later we managed to locate Col and cut him out.  What had caused these normally placid sheep that usually get on so well together to behave in such a mad way....Baabara was on heat and they were fighting for the lovely ladies affections. I am hoping when they got back to their enclosure she told them how stupid they both were, I am guessing she did (or they frightened themselves when they fell) as the next day all was calm in the sheep pen. We did put the electric fence back on though just in case. I now know why shepherds only have one ram in each flock. I now have to decide which is ram to spare from going to the abattoir. Personality wise I would choose Mint, he is much friendlier and easy to manage. Col is a much bigger and stronger ram so it makes sense to keep him if we want strong lambs, I am just not sure I want my lambs to have his miserable untrusting temperament.

So hormones, in particular testosterone seems to be causing us an awful lot of extra work at the moment. Anyone know how long the silly season lasts?

Drugged Up Sheep

My main animal related job today was to give the sheep their worming treatment before moving them to their new pasture. I only have five sheep and I managed to catch four of them within minutes and administer the drug, Col the fifth and largest of our sheep evaded capture, as always. 

Col is a strange sheep, very serious, very cautious, if he was a person I would say he probably has a similar personality to Gordon Brown, the UK ex-Prime Minister (not sure whether to apologise to Col or Gordon for this comparison), if Col was human he would definitely be an accountant or a tax inspector!

Anyway I digress. The problem now is that when you worm animals kept together they all need to receive the treatment, preferably within a short time of each other. All of the flock are then kept on their existing pasture for 3-5 days, although opinion varies and depends on the treatment given, this allows them to pass any worms on pasture that will then not be reused in the immediate future. The animals are then moved onto clean ground and hopefully remain healthy and happy. 

Because of Cols lack of enthusiasm for taking his medicine I am now waiting for Steve to get back from work so that we can hopefully catch him by surprise this evening. I am sure it will be a surprise as it is now pitch black outside and we are going to be trying to catch him by head torch light! Having lived In Yorkshire before moving to France I heard many a tale of strange goings on in the dark with sheep! I now know it was nothing untoward, just some poor shepherd trying to do his job.  Animals can be so ungrateful.

Whilst waiting  for Steve to arrive home, I shall regale you with the interesting details of the drug I am using on the sheep, obviously not very interesting to anyone that doesn't keep sheep, so you might want to skip a couple of paragraph. I am using a worming treatment called Cydectine, according to the instructions it should be administered every 4-6 weeks, it kills one type of worm in 4 weeks and another in 5 weeks, BUT there is a lot of debate about the build up of immunity, common sense would suggest that the more often you use a drug the quicker the immunity will build up.  Researching the worming of sheep on the Internet will result in greater confusion, although in general most owners of sheep seem to rotate the brand of wormer to control immunity, the timing of worming varies considerably.  There are of course some valid reasons for this variation, in particular the environment in which your sheep live, if you live in a hot country one would assume that there is a greater risk of contamination, the less land you have in which to rotate the sheep or the more sheep you have per square meter can also increase the risk of contamination, there are so many variables that it makes it difficult for a newbie to know what to do.

Each animal carer must use common sense to decide what drugs to administer and how often, but this common sense only comes about with experience, there can be a very steep learning curve to gain this experience. Before we started keeping animals, I thought I had researched the subject quite well, but things did not go according to plan.  My plan was to get some goats as we have 12.5 hectares of land that was half and half pasture and woodland, that was what the cadastral recorded the land as, but after between 5 - 10 years of no animals grazing on the land it was hard to call it anything other than bramble and bracken fields. That is were the goats came in, they would clear the brambles and bracken which would allow grass to grow again and then sheep could be grazed on the grass.  So the plan was put into action, five goats arrived, they cleared sections of land and then seven sheep arrived to munch the grass, except after a couple of weeks we had a very poorly goat and the sheep were not thriving, they had scour (diarrhea).  Both goats and sheep came from the Gers, very dry compared to our mountainous region, our land was damp and marshy even in the height of summer, I thought the change had caused the health problems.  A day later a lamb died, another was very poorly and the goat was emaciated looking, I went to the vets to discuss the situation.  The vet immediately diagnosed liver fluke (Douve in French), he also asked me about their worming program and I had to admit that I had no idea about it, I hadn't even asked when I acquired the animals.  All the animals were wormed and given a liver fluke treatment immediately.  Unfortunately another lamb died and this may have been due to my inexperience. I didn't think to mark the sheep as we gave them their treatments and at this point I didn't really know the sheep individually, it is possible that I inadvertently gave one sheep two doses of treatment and another missed out altogether.  After this fiasco I read up more on sheep illnesses and treatments and found that I should have quarantined any new animals coming in for a couple of weeks and given them the treatments if I didn't know their previous history. My plan to have the sheep follow the goats over each pasture was quickly modified, each group now has a completely separate set of grazing areas, over time I will go back to my follow-on plan but there will be periods of months between the goats grazing on a plot and the sheep then going onto the same pasture.  I also ensure that I worm both sets of animals within a few days of each other despite them not coming into contact with each other. 

I still face dilemmas regarding routine medical treatments, I don't want my animals to be pumped full of chemicals, we are trying to live an ecological life here, but I also don't want my animals to suffer needlessly. I am now trying to use common sense to determine the best course of treatments. The last time I wormed my animals was September, they all seem fairly healthy but I am worried I am pushing my luck, and one thing I have learnt about sheep is that when they become ill the speed at which they succumb is phenomenal. Two sheep will be going to the abattoir soon and Eleanor my alpine goat has just given birth, her kid won't have any natural resistance, but can gain some resistance from her mother if the mother is wormed within a week of giving birth. So I am biting the bullet and re-worming. I will re-treat in March before the weather starts to turn hot, summer is the worst time for parasites causing health problems.

Eleanor with her kid January

Since starting to write this post Steve has returned, we went off in the dark to capture Col, mission completed.  When we got to the sheep pasture Col and two other sheep were outside the fence, as we walked up Col launched himself at the net fence and got his horn stuck in it, I grabbed him, Steve held onto him whilst I loaded up the vile and it was all over in minutes. There are some things you just cannot do on your own, giving Col his medicine is one of them.

Wood Weekend

Christmas and New Year have been an gone, we had a bit of a rest other than feeding and moving the animals. Our thoughts this week turned to wood, probably because our supply was dwindling, and of course winter is the time to be cutting down trees before the sap starts to rise again in the spring.

This is our third winter here and we are still not self-sufficient in wood terms. When we moved here there was no existing wood store, although plenty of fallen trees. The first winter we cut some of the fallen wood and hoped it had been down long enough to burn well, it didn't.  Last winter we had cut some wood but not enough to last the whole winter, so we bought half our winter supply in (about 4 stere).  In  spring we decided not to cut wood for this winter but for next winter so that it would be properly seasoned. We have so far this winter bought in 4 stere of 1 meter lengths of mixed wood, although primarily chestnut, we then cut these into thirds.

On Saturday we took a trailer and went to pick up the wood and today we cut it and stacked it, which took us about 3 hours.  We have a good system now, Steve cuts I load the wheelbarrow and then transport the wood to our primary wood store next to the house. When we first came here I could only do a few wheelbarrows before I ran out of energy and muscle power, today I did the full 3 hours with one tea break, although I guess I will be aching tomorrow!

Cutting wood is hard work, particularly when you still have to do all your other daily chores, however it is very satisfying to see the wood piled up. There is an old saying that cutting your own wood warms you twice over, once when you cut and stack it and then again when you burn it.

I also now make my own faggots, no they aren't meat balls, but bundles of twigs tied with string (picture below). I make the faggots from all the branches and twigs from the saplings we cut down around the house. I got the idea for making these from a fiction book I read that was set in medival times, seemingly  in towns it was common for woman to sell the faggots from a basket on the street. We no longer have to buy fire lighters and have no trouble getting a roaring fire going in minutes.

Before coming to France I had never lite a wood fire before and use to really struggle to get them going.  My method now is to put a layer of crumpled up paper, topped by  layer of cardboard, then a faggot and then small  branches, these are all arranged in a wigwam shape. I will try to remember to take a photo of the set fire before I light it and post it here. Until then here are todays wood related photos.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year,hope you had a peaceful and enjoyable Christmas.

We have spent some of the Christmas holiday catching up on animal jobs. We finally managed to separate the male piglets from the female and put them in the new pig pen, photos in next blog post.

We rounded up the goats and moved them down to their winter quarters again. Every time I have moved them down to the barn they have broken free and come back up to their summer enlosure.  This time we tethered Eleanor and Masie.  I have been getting worried about getting them to stay near/in the barn as both female goats are pregnant and I wanted to get them use to the barn before they give birth.  Our timing couldn't  have been better, we moved them on the 31st and this morning I went down to find we had a new addition, Eleanor hàs given birth to a very cute and rather sturdy little kid, that definitely looks like its father Bandit.  It is very fluffy so I haven't determined whether it is a boy or a girl yet.  We are calling it January because it was born on the 1st January.  What a great start to the new year.  Thank goodness the weather is fairly mild at the moment.