Being a hog at Windhaven Farm is a pretty cool thing. You get a great little house to live in with your mom and dad and siblings. You get a nice big yard of mud to dig in and make big hog wallows of wet happy mucky mud. And you get plenty of green grass to munch and play with as well as hay and feed and lots of goodies… especially once the garden gets rocking!
(Green is the new black to the hog world…)
But for some reason, Miss Ebony and her brood have been taking little walk abouts. Field trips, if you may… Without permission from the Hog Mistress Maggie.
They basically are pretty strong little critters and when they want to get through something, they pretty much are able to do so. We knew our door to their house was failing and was pretty ancient… the wood was crumbling and Maggie had repaired it a couple times already. So one afternoon after we returned from getting a bit of ice cream… we found the whole family was out and digging around the middle yard. Just having a good old time. Thank goodness for our perimeter fence… they can’t go very far… still….
Maggie is giving Ebony a chance to explain herself. I don’t think Maggie is buying her story.
It is cute to watch them walk around the yard. I would love to let them graze and have a good old time, but the problem is, they dig and root. All over the place. They are pretty destructive.
The two little girls from Ebony’s first litter that we retained to help build our herd. One will be staying with us as a breeder and one, alas, will be going to freezer camp! Just the way things have to be. Unfortunately, the one that is going to camp is a small runt girl. I really don’t think she has the best genes and such for passing on the line of these endangered hogs. We’ll see how things go come October. Perhaps she’ll surprise me!
Thankfully, this afternoon, they only decided to root up the creek bottom… it’s nearly dry right now, so that’s okay. We kind of wanted to clean it out anyway, so they did help. However, they also started to dig around the wood pile and by the sheep paddock! Bad piggies.
Luckily, they really love Maggie. Or well, they really love Maggie’s bucket. She got a little corn and everyone was more than happy to follow her back. We assesed the damage to the door and made some plans to work on fixing it.
Guess it’s a good thing I got a little grass seed leftover.
The chickens are always so darn curious. They have to check things out no matter what is up. After all, there might be food spillage. You just never know.
Well, we managed to get them locked back in. Can’t wait until we can get the new door made and really get their new fence put in around the hut. They really need better fencing for sure. Can’t have them getting out all the time. I don’t have enough grass seed for that!
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