Well finally Gladys and Nora made their somewhat tentative appearance this morning. Sat quietly in Helen's landrover (Helen is the owner of the animal feed shop in Lloc), both of them eyed me and the field with a stubborn anxiety when we opened the van door!Helen,her husband and I (non of us with any experience of pigs) eyed the pigs......the pigs stood their ground and eyed us, and and the stalemate seemed to last an age. We tried shaking a bucket of pig nuts, we tried pushing and pulling and we tried waving a tempting carrot in their general direction.....we even tried pleading....but in the end it took an empty bucket over the head and two pairs of strong arms to get both ladies into their new pen.
Nora (left in above pic) Is the bigger and baldest pig, Gladys has the a more squashed facial look but both are quite charming in a food orientated piggy type of way.
The girls settled down almost immediately. Grunting happily to themselves they scoured every inch of their new home, eating everything they could find. Occasionally they would raise their heads to gaze with tiny eyes at the rest of the allotment , then satisfied with the view, off they would amble, noses pressed closely to the floor.
By four pm, they had totally exhausted themselves and both flopped into the duck house to sleep ( you could hear the farting from halfway up the field!) I got on with clearing the veg plots and let the Scotties out for a sniff around.
The dogs immediately knew that there was something interesting in the old duck house and they galloped for the pig pen barking loudly. Both pigs shot out, tails high up in the air and ran to meet the dogs. Maddie held her ground while George bolted for the safety of the hen house, but there was no further confrontation after their brief nose to snout sniff off. Maddie obviously worked out that the pigs were far too big to confront and the pigs obviously worked out that Maddie was inedible!
Our family now consists of:-
4 dogs,1 cat,2 pigs,2 turkeys,11 ducks,41 hens,6 bantams,4 buff chicks and 2 middle aged poofs
The girls are lovely!! I thought pot belly pigs were little tiny things. These pigs have some meat on their bones!
ReplyDeleteNice that you were able to give them a home. I'm just waiting for the post where you get a goat!
ReplyDeleteOf course if I had the land I would get a mini goat and a sheep or two!