Then, we telephone and confirm everything when the sow has farrowed. Then we confirm again at four to six weeks old with the expectation the weaners will be collected around nine weeks of age (weaned around nine to 10 weeks, one week to check they’re okay on entirely solids and then off).

We also have to balance the desires of many different people, so I spend a lot of time working the number of boars and gilts into batches that fit the available buyers. Some people only want gilts, some only boars, some a mix, some want even numbers, some want odd.

It takes a lot of phoning and negotiating to get all the weaners assigned, with us taking the remaining one or two.

Then, a week or two (sometimes even a day) before collection, people start changing their minds, wanting the price dropped, wanting different combinations of pigs, wanting different numbers, cancelling their order entirely.

I’d tell a lot of them to sod off (and actually do) but I have to be careful not to be left with a lot of unsold pigs. So, that’s when I have to hand off negotiations to the more tactful and diplomatic OH. She’s had the British stiff upper lip and politeness training (and is more tactful than I to boot), so she can be politely annoyed without actually calling it as it is. As I’ve said before, she’s the Sales and Marketing Department!!

Good luck with the new adverts!

We give receipts both for deposts and on sale, while we’re hardly likely to disappear when the croft is fixed in place.

If we only sold to people who paid deposits, we’d sell almost no pigs at all.

Do you ask them for a deposit, a non refundable deposit? If not might be worth thinking about as those who are not entirely serious won’t cough up and those that do should complete the sale more readily.

Worth a try.

It sounds a bit unlikely though, but I suppose there’s always a chance that more than a dozen Discoveries did in fact break down!