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<\/a><\/p>\nNot so cute anymore.\u00a0 Although, in her defense, with the fashionable IKEA shelves of cinder blocks and boards, she’s probably thinks she’s just in the garage instead of our family food storage area.<\/p>\n
I also thought, after my furious and ferocious fight to have a dining room (as opposed to a fancy table used as a dumping ground), we should make good use of it.\u00a0 At least 3 times a week we eat in the dining room.\u00a0 With china plates and cloth napkins and lit candles.\u00a0 In my stupefying ignorance I thought it would be cute to let the children set the table and light the candles.\u00a0 Now, before our relaxing and family-bonding meal, the children fight to the death over whose turn it is to light the candles while waving lit matchsticks and steak knives around.<\/p>\n
Mostly a bad idea.\u00a0 Especially since this month’s centerpiece involves Easter grass.\u00a0 Probably highly flammable Easter grass.<\/p>\n
So it was not surprising that I turned a sweet and innocent piglet…<\/p>\n into a squealing monster at meal time.<\/p>\n Because he was sickly when we got him, I supplemented his pig pellets with fresh, warm goat milk at feeding time.\u00a0 Boy, did he love his cereal!<\/p>\n He loved it so much that he started squealing as soon as he heard the deck door open in the mornings.\u00a0 He squealed as I entered the barn yard.\u00a0 He squealed the entire time that I milked.\u00a0 He squealed and squealed and squealed until he got his hot cereal.\u00a0 Even in the evenings when the rest of the barn yard was quietly settling in for the night.\u00a0 Even on the mornings when I milked at 4am.<\/p>\n I had to start avoiding the poor neighbor that shared a property line with Papa’s pasture.\u00a0 If the neighbor was out getting his mail, I had to turn off the road, haul a$$ up the driveway, jump out of the car, and rush into the house looking too busy to entertain any sort of neighborly commentary.\u00a0 Commentary like, “Hey, what the heck is that I hear getting murdered in your yard every morning at 4am?”\u00a0 If he happened to see me out doing barn chores and approached the fence line, I was forced to drop whatever I had in my hands and cower in the kidding barn until Bruno gave the all-clear.<\/p>\n You probably think I’m exaggerating.\u00a0 That’s because you’ve never heard a pig squealing at 4am.\u00a0 I’d like to share a video of it with you.\u00a0 But I can’t.\u00a0 Because you can’t hold a video camera and cover your ears with both hands at the same time.\u00a0 Luckily some people at MasterSoundEffects have recorded a squealing pig.\u00a0 I’m not really sure why.\u00a0 Unless they sold it to the government for painful PSYOP torture.\u00a0 In any case, here’s what it sounds like:<\/p>\n pig squeal<\/a><\/p>\n Please note that no pigs were harmed during that recording.\u00a0 They didn’t have to be.\u00a0 Their breakfast just had to be later than they would have liked.<\/p>\n Normally I enjoy my milking time in the barn.\u00a0 So I had to find some way to address this issue.\u00a0 I know what you’re thinking:\u00a0 Feed the pig first, you moron.\u00a0 But remember that I used the milk from the morning milking to put in his pellets.\u00a0 And if you gave him dry pellets he just went right back to squealing.\u00a0 If I heated milk in the house, carried it out, and tried to feed Papa first, the entire barn yard was in an uproar.\u00a0 Bruno barked frantically (he gets fed first!), CC tried to break into the grain room (she gets fed second!) and the goats toppled everything in milking room (they get fed third on the milking stand!).\u00a0 Like I mentioned earlier, Papa is not actually the first or only monster I’ve created.<\/p>\n Fortunately, this was one of the few times in life when money could solve my problems.\u00a0 For a mere $70 (ack!), I purchased an automatic pig feeder at my local feed store.<\/p>\n This lovely item stores up to 50lbs of feed and allows the pig to lift the flap at the bottom of the feeder to access it.\u00a0 Whenever he wants to.\u00a0 When he first wakes up.\u00a0 All day long.\u00a0 And right before he finally stumbles off to his house for bedtime.\u00a0 Because of the flap, guineas and chickens who had been sharing his food in the past, could no longer get to it.\u00a0 Which makes me happy because, really, the poultry is supposed to be foraging for their own natural food, not eating pig pellets.\u00a0 It also makes me happy because once Papa figured out the flap, he was too pleased to have free access food to worry about not getting milk in it.\u00a0 After the first day he was way too stuffed to do much squealing.\u00a0 He mostly did this:<\/p>\n Or this:<\/p>\n Maybe this:<\/p>\n And sometimes this:<\/p>\n Good Pig.<\/p>\n Of course, there were some problems that needed tweaking.\u00a0 Always secure an automatic pig feeder with some bungee or twine to a large object.\u00a0 An object large enough that a greedy pig cannot push the feeder over and climb inside.\u00a0 Trust me on this.<\/p>\n Also, don’t believe anyone who tells you that pigs are the only animals smart enough to figure out the flap.\u00a0 While it’s true that the goats bypassed the easier access of the bottom flap, they weren’t afraid to use it as a step ladder and go in through the top.<\/p>\n A new watering method had to be found, too.\u00a0 The cute little automatic waterer that held 2 quarts of water had always been sufficient for the poultry and the bucks in that pasture.\u00a0 But that wasn’t enough for a pig with free access food.\u00a0 By midmorning he had stopped it up with his thick slobber and food bits.\u00a0 If I was lucky, it just stopped working and I came out to find a hot and thirsty pig that kept trying to knock me over as I cleaned it out and let it refill.\u00a0 If I was unlucky, Papa had flipped the waterer over so that the sludge came out and the water could run out freely.\u00a0 So freely that it saturated the pasture and created a lovely wallow:<\/p>\n Bad Pig.<\/p>\n I salvaged a rubber tub that we kept on the deck for raising tadpoles and carried it to the pig pasture.\u00a0 Although it doesn’t automatically refill, it does provide enough water for at least one full day.\u00a0 And there’s a hose spigot right above it for easy filling while I work on other chores.\u00a0 Plus it sits over a rocky area so that it can be drained without creating too much mud.<\/p>\n But don’t feel bad for Papa.\u00a0 He hasn’t been relegated to a neglected life now that he doesn’t get brought cereal and milk twice a day.\u00a0 He has a personal mister service on warm days:<\/p>\n He gets a bowl of scraps from the kitchen at least once a day.\u00a0 Like these brussel sprout trimmings, salmon skin, leftover macaroni and cheese, and pecan bars of which no one could eat one more bite.<\/p>\n Or the last remaining piece of crab quiche alongside a duck egg that had to be sacrificed because we found it in the yard and weren’t sure if it was developed or not.<\/p>\n He’s quite happy with whatever he gets in the scrap bowl.<\/p>\n And the chickens and guineas clean up whatever he leaves behind.<\/p>\n Although I have a feeling that they may not be doing that much longer.\u00a0 Because yesterday when I went to fill his scrap bowl I found that it already had a scrap in it.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n