Thursday, December 27, 2012

My pigs don't need me

Our 3 pigs live on about 10 acres of pasture.  There's a lot of grass for them to root up and eat so they don't need the pellet food and slop I give them every day to survive.  They might grow slower but they'd survive.  They also have a self-filling trough so they don't need me to fill water buckets for them either.  There are two 8X8 structures in their field which they use for shelter.  Now that it's turned colder they seem to prefer the one that gets the sun longest.  This used to be a goat house but they've taken it over since the goats moved out.  They would probably be fine without a structure since there's still a lot of tall grass out there but these houses make things much more comfortable for them, especially on cold, windy and wet days. 

Tonight when I went down to visit them I saw how homey Roxie had made things in their house.  Instead of waiting for me to put hay in there for them to sleep in, (which I wasn't planning to do anytime soon since I'm so stingy with hay), she decided to do it herself.  She built a berm of dirt to block the doorway somewhat and then picked lots of grass and made a big nest behind the berm.  It looks very cozy now.  I wonder how long it took her to pull up all this grass to fill at least half the house.   I should have taken a picture but it was so cold and windy and Calvin and Hobbes were pestering me for food and I wanted to get back to our house.  I'm sure they didn't help with the housekeeping.  They're busy little guys but I think their busy-ness is focused on feeding their piggy little faces, not helping their mom.   They're still really cute. 

Smart animals, pigs.  I want to get a video of one of the pigs I sold to a neighbor to show you how a pig can be trained to do tricks.  I won't give it away now.  I'll wait to post the video of her. 

 

1 comment:

  1. That's one very smart pig! Does it feel good not being needed or are you at a loss?

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