How to make your pigs happy
25 10 2007The weather is growing colder, the frosts are hardening and the winds have a chill feel to them, so that means a change in feeding for the pigs.
Instead of a dry mix of rolled barley, raw vegetables, apples and sow rolls they move onto a warm porridge of potatoes, barley, vegetables and apples with a scoop or two of sow rolls thrown in (depending on need).
The potatoes are boiled up for 20 minutes until they start falling apart and are then tipped, water and all, into large buckets.
The barley, chopped vegetables and apples are then stirred in, the buckets covered and wrapped in hessian to keep the heat in, and the whole lot is left for for 20-30 minutes.
I then add a little cold water to get the temperature down to blood temperature, stir in the sow rolls and take the feed out to the pigs.
That’s when the fun begins.
Today was the first day of the winter feed regime, so as I walked out with steaming, smelly buckets I could see the adult pigs that have spent a couple of years with us getting very, very excited as they recognised the sight and smell.
Pigs get fairly voluble and excited at feeding time any way, but when they spotted their treat the noise reach new levels of intensity, the sows tried to shoulder their way through the gates, and Graham, our boar, did his best to lift his gate off and throw it away.
The new sow and the piglets weren’t quite sure what all the fuss was about, but hey, if everyone else was getting excited, maybe they should too.
Getting into the pens and field was even more of an obstacle course than usual, but as I poured the porridge into the troughs and feed buckets, the pigs started slurping away, tails wagging madly.
Another telling sign that the pigs have a treat is that they don’t rush from bucket to bucket or trough to trough to see if another pig has better feed.
Instead, they find themselves a bucket or trough, then stand and concentrate on scoffing as much as possible.
But the best sight of all this morning was two of the Berkshire piglets.
They discovered that if they bent their forelegs under at the knees - which pigs often do when eating or drinking - when they were in the trough, then pushed with their backlegs they could scoot along the length of the trough with the delicious porridge being forced into their mouths as they went.
It was like watching a watching a cross between a bob sled and a road scraper as they barged their way along the trough, slurping, gobbling and swallowing at speed.
Yep, they’re happy pigs.
Trotters in the trough, what a delightful image, every cook likes an appreciative audience
I laughed so much at the idea of the piglets invent themselves a non stop feed mechanism and a slide all at the same time!
I love the noises animals make when they are just about to get something nice - my horses waiting for their apple and carrot ‘afters’ last thing at night, my checken Pecky making a happy ‘braughhh’ noise when she finds a nice worm, and the squeaking of my Border terrier when she thinks she might get a toast crust…..
It’s great, and they sound very very happy lucky pigs
Another great noise is the sound two of our sows make when they’re getting a belly rub - a long, slow, shuddering snore of delight, followed by a big inhalation and then another shuddery snore. Fantastic.
Oh and the the sound a cow makes to it’s new born calf, magic.
And when the sow calls her litter to dinner, then chats to them while they greedily suck like demented Hoovers on speed.
You have GOT to get a digital camera and post some YouTube vids of those bobsledding piglets.
Do you do the “turn them loose in the orchard for the windfalls” thing? I always heard you had to be careful with horses and ponies, because they’d founder, but pigs it seems can eat anything.
Raincoaster, the only practical way of capturing the pigs in action would be a permanent pigcam or two. And unless someone would like to volunteer the equipment, time and cash, it’s not going to happen.
It would be fun, though!
As for feeding windfalls to pigs, yes, it can be done although you have to be careful not to turn them onto ground with a lot of windfalls in warmer weather. If you do, there’s a good chance you’ll end up with drunken pigs!
We can’t turn our pigs out under our apple trees as we’d have no front garden left. That would mean no raspberries, blueberries, goosberries, tayberries, or herbs.
And the problem with drunk pigs is??? It’s not like they’re driving home!
A good feed on apples just prior to slaughter might obviate the need to make apple sauce?