Not actually a small victory
I've been immersing into the farm lately. This is good for me and for the farm in a lot of ways.
Anyhow, I've been spending time thinking about systems and about the animals. Part of this is the business class, writing about these things, and part of it is having some of my interpersonal met in quality-vs-quantity ways so more time gets freed up.
One of these systems is moving animals. The guy took Oak and Nox the other day. This involved three pig movements.
First I had to separate Nox and Oak from the main herd. This can be hard since pigs like to herd together. I'd observed that after I put food into the first bowl Oak usually followed the bucket (since Baby would usually chase him away from the first bowl). The pigs are in two fields right now with an open gate between them. The food bowls are usually in one field but I moved one of the bowls into the other field a couple days in advance so they'd all get used to it being there. Then I had Tucker come help. At feeding time we closed the gate most of the way between the two pastures and he manned the gate. With the help of some cheese, careful food bucketing, and his ability to selectively let pigs back through the gate we got them separated. When there's enough food to eat they're usually pretty pliable so a little bit of a nudge to stay or go is fairly easy. Once they were in that half of the field we lured them through the fence down into the garden. The hardest part is keeping a set separated when they can see the herd, so I ran extra electric all along the fence on the herd side and the garden had nice sleeping spots and fields of corn and clover so Nox and Oak didn't push too too hard to get back. I also put double hogpanels up where Nox and Oak came through into the garden so they'd be less inclined to push. That was day 1, maybe 2 hours.
Next day I had to get them into the woodshed. Tucker was gone so it was just me, it was important to think extra carefully and go with the pigs' instincts. Pigs won't generally go somewhere they can't see: if there's light coming under a wall or through a fence they're more likely to push at it and try to go there. Likewise they can't see well at a distance, so they won't know a wire fence exists until they're up close. There were two areas between the garden and the woodshed: the narrow apple field and my yard. I used plywood to close off the apple field in the two directions I didn't want them to go, so from far away they could see it was impassable and wouldn't even try. In my yard I maneuvered two trailers and my car to block off the road direction and lined them with a combination of plywood and hog panels depending on what looked more passable. The house blocked one direction, the apple field the pigs would be coming out of was a third direction. The fourth direction was driveway/woodshed, which I blocked very strongly with plywood except for a bit of hog panel/wire fence next to the woodshed opening. The woodshed opening itself is made poorly, it requires turning a couple corners and pigs do not like that. So I wanted to at least get them as close as possible.
By the time I'd moved all the trailers etc etc setup took 3 hours. I took a couple breaks to go into the pen with Nox and Oak and call and give them some cheese to get them to follow me back and forth across the pen. I hadn't given them breakfast yet. Several times, when they came to the gate to meet me, I thought I could just let them out and maybe they would follow me into the woodshed... but I didn't, I finished setup. Buy the time I let them out they followed me right out. I closed the gate behind them. With a little cheese Nox followed me right near to the woodshed. I'd put a food bowl just visible in the door of the woodshed and she paused by the corner, walking back into the yard and then back to me a couple times. I gave her cheese whenever she came towards me and ignored her when she went away. After maybe six minutes she started eating the food near the woodshed door; I pulled it slowly into the woodshed and she ate and moved forward without seeming to notice. Suddenly she put her head up, once she was mostly into the woodshed, and went over to the back corner and started to eat the nest of duck eggs (some rotten) back there.
Oak took a few more minutes but eventually he, too, was coaxed. It's much easier to get a pig to follow another pig than it is to get them to move independently so once I got him into line of sight of Nox he wandered back in and I could lock them in.
That was the second move: 3 hours prep, 20 mins moving.
Then the guy buying them showed up with a box on the back of a pickup. A dark box a couple feet in the air.
Well, luckily the pigs were in the woodshed which has a lot of restriction around the door (that's why it's hard to get pigs in there). I dragged some bins etc up to form a chute. We packed under the truck's box with straw bales, then built a stairway up into the truck with straw. I put a bale of straw and a ton of slightly rotten goose meat into the truck and made sure everything between the woodshed and the truck was walled off with plywood. We then let the pigs out of the back of the woodshed. They came out, we closed the door behind. They came out into the chute, we closed the door behind. The woodshed wall has a space between the bottom of the wall and the top of the ground; they were really pushing to get back into the woodshed there and I put some plywood along the wall to block that. They seemed interested in the truck, Nox especially, and Oak was pretty interested in Nox (I expect she's going into heat now that she's been taken away from her piglets). We slowly walked another piece of plywood forward and Nox put her hooves up on the step, stepped down, stepped back up. It went like this for awhile, then we started inching forward with the plywood to reduce the amount of space in the chute-- it was full of rich soil and worms and they liked digging it up. Eventually Nox climbed into the pickup after maybe 20 minutes of cheese being thrown just a little bit further and a little bit further.
Then it was just Oak and he was a bit cranky about it. He stood with his hind legs on the ground and his forefeet on the hay bale, watching Nox and hanging out, backed away and tried to push the walls to get out, and then climbed back up and hung out with just his forefeet out. By this time we'd moved plywood right up behind him in the chute and waited. Eventually I started being just a little annoying behind him: tapping his legs, rubbing the plywood against his butt. He tried to come down again and push all possible ways out: the board behind him, the corners of the chute, the plywood along the tops of the bins, and then finally just scrambled up beside Nox. We moved in pretty quick and tossed hay bales aside and got the tailgate closed and that was that.
I'm pretty pleased with the way it went. No one was super stressed. There weren't a lot of emergencies. A lot of time was sunk into prep and less was sunk into trying to maneuver very strong 350lb self-willed animals into doing my will. and I GOT PIGS TO CLIMB INTO A PICKUP TRUCK how amazing is that?
Baby knew there were pigs out of his herd and spent the couple days foaming at the mouth a lot but seems more chill now, and Oak is off with Nox to be a herd sire.
Phew.
Anyhow, I've been spending time thinking about systems and about the animals. Part of this is the business class, writing about these things, and part of it is having some of my interpersonal met in quality-vs-quantity ways so more time gets freed up.
One of these systems is moving animals. The guy took Oak and Nox the other day. This involved three pig movements.
First I had to separate Nox and Oak from the main herd. This can be hard since pigs like to herd together. I'd observed that after I put food into the first bowl Oak usually followed the bucket (since Baby would usually chase him away from the first bowl). The pigs are in two fields right now with an open gate between them. The food bowls are usually in one field but I moved one of the bowls into the other field a couple days in advance so they'd all get used to it being there. Then I had Tucker come help. At feeding time we closed the gate most of the way between the two pastures and he manned the gate. With the help of some cheese, careful food bucketing, and his ability to selectively let pigs back through the gate we got them separated. When there's enough food to eat they're usually pretty pliable so a little bit of a nudge to stay or go is fairly easy. Once they were in that half of the field we lured them through the fence down into the garden. The hardest part is keeping a set separated when they can see the herd, so I ran extra electric all along the fence on the herd side and the garden had nice sleeping spots and fields of corn and clover so Nox and Oak didn't push too too hard to get back. I also put double hogpanels up where Nox and Oak came through into the garden so they'd be less inclined to push. That was day 1, maybe 2 hours.
Next day I had to get them into the woodshed. Tucker was gone so it was just me, it was important to think extra carefully and go with the pigs' instincts. Pigs won't generally go somewhere they can't see: if there's light coming under a wall or through a fence they're more likely to push at it and try to go there. Likewise they can't see well at a distance, so they won't know a wire fence exists until they're up close. There were two areas between the garden and the woodshed: the narrow apple field and my yard. I used plywood to close off the apple field in the two directions I didn't want them to go, so from far away they could see it was impassable and wouldn't even try. In my yard I maneuvered two trailers and my car to block off the road direction and lined them with a combination of plywood and hog panels depending on what looked more passable. The house blocked one direction, the apple field the pigs would be coming out of was a third direction. The fourth direction was driveway/woodshed, which I blocked very strongly with plywood except for a bit of hog panel/wire fence next to the woodshed opening. The woodshed opening itself is made poorly, it requires turning a couple corners and pigs do not like that. So I wanted to at least get them as close as possible.
By the time I'd moved all the trailers etc etc setup took 3 hours. I took a couple breaks to go into the pen with Nox and Oak and call and give them some cheese to get them to follow me back and forth across the pen. I hadn't given them breakfast yet. Several times, when they came to the gate to meet me, I thought I could just let them out and maybe they would follow me into the woodshed... but I didn't, I finished setup. Buy the time I let them out they followed me right out. I closed the gate behind them. With a little cheese Nox followed me right near to the woodshed. I'd put a food bowl just visible in the door of the woodshed and she paused by the corner, walking back into the yard and then back to me a couple times. I gave her cheese whenever she came towards me and ignored her when she went away. After maybe six minutes she started eating the food near the woodshed door; I pulled it slowly into the woodshed and she ate and moved forward without seeming to notice. Suddenly she put her head up, once she was mostly into the woodshed, and went over to the back corner and started to eat the nest of duck eggs (some rotten) back there.
Oak took a few more minutes but eventually he, too, was coaxed. It's much easier to get a pig to follow another pig than it is to get them to move independently so once I got him into line of sight of Nox he wandered back in and I could lock them in.
That was the second move: 3 hours prep, 20 mins moving.
Then the guy buying them showed up with a box on the back of a pickup. A dark box a couple feet in the air.
Well, luckily the pigs were in the woodshed which has a lot of restriction around the door (that's why it's hard to get pigs in there). I dragged some bins etc up to form a chute. We packed under the truck's box with straw bales, then built a stairway up into the truck with straw. I put a bale of straw and a ton of slightly rotten goose meat into the truck and made sure everything between the woodshed and the truck was walled off with plywood. We then let the pigs out of the back of the woodshed. They came out, we closed the door behind. They came out into the chute, we closed the door behind. The woodshed wall has a space between the bottom of the wall and the top of the ground; they were really pushing to get back into the woodshed there and I put some plywood along the wall to block that. They seemed interested in the truck, Nox especially, and Oak was pretty interested in Nox (I expect she's going into heat now that she's been taken away from her piglets). We slowly walked another piece of plywood forward and Nox put her hooves up on the step, stepped down, stepped back up. It went like this for awhile, then we started inching forward with the plywood to reduce the amount of space in the chute-- it was full of rich soil and worms and they liked digging it up. Eventually Nox climbed into the pickup after maybe 20 minutes of cheese being thrown just a little bit further and a little bit further.
Then it was just Oak and he was a bit cranky about it. He stood with his hind legs on the ground and his forefeet on the hay bale, watching Nox and hanging out, backed away and tried to push the walls to get out, and then climbed back up and hung out with just his forefeet out. By this time we'd moved plywood right up behind him in the chute and waited. Eventually I started being just a little annoying behind him: tapping his legs, rubbing the plywood against his butt. He tried to come down again and push all possible ways out: the board behind him, the corners of the chute, the plywood along the tops of the bins, and then finally just scrambled up beside Nox. We moved in pretty quick and tossed hay bales aside and got the tailgate closed and that was that.
I'm pretty pleased with the way it went. No one was super stressed. There weren't a lot of emergencies. A lot of time was sunk into prep and less was sunk into trying to maneuver very strong 350lb self-willed animals into doing my will. and I GOT PIGS TO CLIMB INTO A PICKUP TRUCK how amazing is that?
Baby knew there were pigs out of his herd and spent the couple days foaming at the mouth a lot but seems more chill now, and Oak is off with Nox to be a herd sire.
Phew.