Mary's Marked and Isabelle Isn't

This year's piggies. Berkshires. Mary and Isabelle.

After the trials and tribulations of yesterday with its bee losses and poorly lamb, we needed a good and successful day to restore the equilibrium and our faith in the fact that we have the general idea on this small holdering lark. With great timing, our pig supplier had rung to let us know that this year's pigs were ready for collection at 8 weeks old, down in Colbinstown, Co Kildare, south of Newbridge and Kilcullen.

How would you choose. 

These lovely people (Therese and Michael) have the website  http://www.freerangepigsireland.com/ which resolves, rather alarmingly to a page splashed with the header "PiggyWiggy's". You are trying to be a ruffty tuffty stockman, all professional and serious, and you wonder what you are getting into - Piggy Wiggy's? Don't worry. This is geared to their Kune-kune "pet pig" operation. They get all serious and proper when you want Tamworths, Berkshires or other 'proper' pig breeds. They even do "Iron-Age" pigs (Tamworth x Wild Boar, not for the faint hearted).

Mary (left) and Isabelle (right)

We can thoroughly recommend them but it is a bit of a hike from here - 2 hours 40 minutes which is probably not ideal for the young pigs. They seem to be like human babies in a car, though, and drop off to sleep reassuringly at the drum of the engine and the thunk of the Kildare potholes. €65 a pop, in case you are interested. We have this year and last year made a day-trip of it, taking friend Charlotte along, for her pig-wrangling skills (you should see her grab a scarpering piglet by the back leg in the 'proper' manner and lift it, helpless, into her arms). Liz cooks a superb picnic which we eat at the farm sitting on big logs upturned to make tables and seats. This year it included sausage rolls made from last year's Tamworths but Michael (pigman) declined as he has a gluten intolerance, so he needed 'spelt' flour in his pastry. Ah well. All the more for us. The site also houses their nursery - big beds and greenhouses of hellebores and the like. That, they describe as the 'day job'; the pigs are a sideline.

Crated for the run home.

These two pigs had already been named - we had put the question out on one of Liz's internet forums (fora?) and then offered it to the redoubtable Olive (90), good friend of our own "Poobie" in Leeds. Olive was reported to have gone "pink with pleasure" at being asked to name the piggies, and chose Mary Elizabeth and Isabelle Heather just because they were her favourite names (and spellings!). I baulked a bit at naming a pig 'Elizabeth' but I am re-assured that this is OK provided the Elizabeth in question is not your good lady. So Mary and Isabelle it is, but which was to be which?

Charlotte, ace pig-wrangler, gets a firm grip on Isabelle

Driving home, it occurred to me that one had a big white face-splash marking to go with her white socks, while the other only had the tiniest white dot on her forehead, hence "Mary's marked while Isabelle isn't". Had this (Olive's names) not happened, these were going to be named for the Berkshires in the 'Empress' books by one of our favourite authors, PG Wodehouse, but we will have to save those names for another year. We love that as we drive out of the breeder's site. Michael bids us farewell and "Probably see you next year, then?" We are working our way round the breeds at present and can see no reason why not.

Charlotte and Liz check out the parent sow and boar with
Michael the pig-man. 

The girls are now home safe and were set down in their ark which looks enormous against their tiny bodies and they were quickly out exploring the range of their new home. They seem so tiny, I was worried they might sneak through the fences but we've now watched them for a while and maybe they are just a bit big. Tonight the dogs met them through the orchard fence and they took a few wary sniffs at each other but the pigs were unimpressed and wandered off. Liz tells me that the Irish for pig is 'muc' (pronounced 'muck') but there is also the word "banbh" which comes out as 'bonham' and this is a word used a lot in Irish pig farming for young male piglets. Liz tells me that this caused the young Irish girls employed at London auction house "Bonhams" (where she worked for a while) much amusement especially as some of the managers had a particularly 'porcine' look.

Home and exploring the woods.

I guess I should give you an update on yesterday's woes. The lamb seems to be recovering on her doses of liquid paraffin. She looks much more comfortable today with none of the arched back or high tail stuff. We caught her when we got back from the pig run, to give her another dose and she definitely looked like she had passed some fresh poo, so we hope she is feeling a lot more comfortable and relieved. We will keep an eye on her and keep reporting back to Aoife the Vet, but we hope she is on the way back up. Poor little mite. It cannot have been comfortable to be 'backed up' like that.

Checking out the sunny grassy bit.

When I was out in the orchard giving the dogs their run this evening, I was enjoying the dogs trying to chat up the wary pigs, but also took a look at the hive. It is a bitter-sweet thing. The few hundred remaining bees are soldiering on gamely, still out foraging and flying to and fro. They cannot know that there is no future in this and that they are the end of the line for the 'Two Marys' colony from last year. With no queen there is no new young coming through. These ladies will live out their allotted 6 weeks and fade out. I am relying on the promise of some replacement stock soon as the fruit trees in the orchard come into blossom. It will be a shame to have another blossom season go by with no bees going about their work. I'll keep you posted on pigs, lambs and bees.

Mapp and Lucia

Welcome aboard, Mapp and Lucia. 

A big adventure today when we are scheduled to head for Ballymount in Co. Kildare  to collect our pigs, 2 Tamworth females ordered back in February before they were even conceived, to be taken as 8 week old weaners in due course. Due course turned out to be the 5th June and our pig area, house, feed and water were all ready and in place.  It's a bit of a hike down to Kildare from here - 2 and a half hours in the car but Charlotte had asked to come along for the ride so we'd even had to practice fitting 3 people and the dog-crate in the car. Charlotte is an experienced and knowledge-able pig handler so we could definitely use her help and support and then another good reason arrived - she was invited to collect a fancily-marked 'special' Dutch rabbit from a breeder near Mullingar, not far off our route.

Mapp and Lucia cleaned up for the journey. 

The pig breeder is found by typing FreeRangePigsIreland.ie into an internet search but appears as 'Piggy Wiggy' on the website. They (Therese and Michael) are lovely, helpful, cooperative people who could not do enough for us even when our arrival coincided with them taking a delivery of fresh concrete being pumped from a lorry into a prepared hole in the ground - those guys do not stop if you are not ready; you end up with a quickly setting heap to deal with, so it is all hands on deck. We were sent for a wander round to look at the pigs on offer, while they leveled the wet concrete into the shuttering - a new piece of car park. They actually sell Tamworths, Kune-kunes, 'Iron Age' pigs and Berkshires. Only after that were we loaded and documented, our two pigs having been scrubbed up clean for their journey, possibly because they knew we were collecting in a private car.

Back on the road by midday, the two pigs were safe inside our dog crate on the back seat of the car with a dog blanket to lie on if they chose to. They actually lay down as soon as we were in motion and spent the journey home fast asleep, occasionally twitching or moving their mouths in piggy dreams. We had decided to bring a picnic although I'd been worried that the pigs might not enjoy the run and we might have to get home as quick as possible and eat the picnic on the run. No need to worry. We parked under some dense trees to shade the car and the pigs slept on like children in car seats, apparently unaware of the break in the journey.

We wouldn't let Charlotte sneak this tiny
Kune-kune piglet into her pocket.

We made our little diversion to Gainstown to collect the rabbit at an agreed rendezvous outside the National School. Charlotte checked it was the colour mix she'd ordered, checked it over for general health and then quickly sexed it to make sure it was her 'dream boy'. She is a keen breeder and favours the 'Dutch' strain of rabbits, and this boy has Show winners in his blood line. Back on the road then and up through Lanesborough and across the Shannon to Strokestown. Home again we left the still-sleeping piggies in their crate in the car while we relieved the dogs and fed any poultry which was noisily and hopefully greeting us (Hubbards and Geese mainly) and collapsed briefly with a cup of tea.

Snuggling down into the straw.

Next job was to carry the crate down to the new pig house already well stuffed with straw. I had read that if you put 2 tiny piglets into a big area they don't get very comfortable - it is better to put whole straw bales around the edges to give them a smaller 'well' in the middle in which to make their bed. These pigs are not much bigger than our Westie dogs and the ark floor is just under 6 by 8 feet. I had put a bale at either side, intact but with the strings cut and taken out, and then broke up a third bale in the middle.  This seemed to be met with porcine approval and when we left them to it and went back an hour later to check on them, all we could see was straw shaking about disturbed by invisible pigs well snuggled down into it. Charlotte tells us that they are not great travelers and will probably feel a bit queasy and exhausted after the car run so will just snuggle down in there for the night to recover. Tomorrow they will wake up inquisitive and ravenous. Good night little ones. We will come and find you in the morning.

11 keets now dried off and up and about.

Meanwhile, I was going to give you a Guinea Fowl update. We had a burst of 11 eggs hatching over the 24 hours or so of the main event. These guys are dried off and now up and about, rescued to the brooder crate with the Infra Red heat lamp. After a pause, a 12th tried to hatch but came out with a wad of un-absorbed yolk sac outside its body and lost a lot of blood. This one did not make it through the night. The remaining 4 eggs are doing nothing and now, on candling, appear to have the too-big air space which is a sign of a dead embryo. This is quite normal, to have all the 'good' ones hatch in a burst. Any that do not come out then are probably weak or poor in some way. 11 good ones, though, out of 16 eggs rescued from a wet hedge-bottom and incubated in an unsophisticated incubator is still a brilliant result. We are delighted.

We have had a third gosling hatch and this one is doing well, so we have a rather dysfunctional looking family wandering about, with George Junior, at over 2 weeks, looking huge and robust alongside "Very" Junior who is only 2 days old. The other female adult is still hanging in there, sitting on the 6 or so eggs which still remain. It's all 'go' isn't it - pigs, keets, goslings all in the same week, and soon, the bees will be arriving.