Life is Good

Since Laertes is a lazy article - to quote herself, I'm taking over our social media accounts. I'm getting bigger and stronger every week. Only trouble is so is himself and he is able to head butt me into the middle of next week.

My name is Lady Lavinia. I nibble herself's boots and she shouts "stop nibbling" at me.  I suppose we can relax here now and enjoy the sunshine as herself says she's keeping us for breeding (whatever that means).

We are loving this warm sunny weather and spend a lot of it sleeping.

The ground is dry and dusty now. It was awful in winter. I hated getting into bed with mucky trotters.

This is himself and this is where you find him most days now. He gets sunburned but he doesn't seem to care. I don't because I root up a big hole and surround it with dried grass and mud and snuggle down into it.

We get fed twice a day now. Breakfast is barley and organic pig nuts. She's been adding garlic powder for a few days now. We are not keen on it but are usually so hungry we eat it.

I try to nibble the grass under the hurty white stuff. Herself keeps saying she is moving us to the next field. Wish she'd hurry up.

Then in the evening she wheels out the wheel barrow and gives us fruit and vegetables. Laertes love avocados, beetroot leaves and tomatoes. I love tomatoes too so we fight over them. We both like melons, grapes, in fact everything sweet.

We get another bucket of barley and pig nuts with more garlic powder in the evening.

Every time a human appears we gallop over because you never know what you might get. We are always on the look out for food.

We have to learn how to wallow yet. Herself keeps saying she'll show us how to do it. Can't wait to see that.


Pigs have the life.

Give me an oul follow over on Twitter. I'm @rasherandsausag and I will be a lot better than Laertes at twittering.

Laertes, son of Polonius

Allow me to introduce Laertes. He is the son of Oldefarm's Polonius. He is a gentle giant. I also had his brother who was black with thin brown stripes. I actually preferred the colouring of his brother but he was a cranky character. Laertes is the exact opposite. We realised that once he was separated from his brother that he had been bullied by him. He now has the luxury of leaving his food until later. He never had that opportunity before.

When the day came for them both to go to the abattoir we loaded his brother relatively easily.  But Laertes was cute and evaded loading. Because of this he got a reprieve. My son convinced me it was an omen and anyway he had "Lestat" eyes. He was full of reasons as to why we should not kill him. I was between two minds but, having already killed a sow I wished I hadn't, I was dithering. Later that day I got him into the horse box but something stopped me from closing the ramp and rather sheepishly I walked back up the field.

Now we have decided to keep him as a breeding boar. He has a lovely gentle nature and even as he gets fully grown I can't see this changing. And although he was not unduly lonely I decided to get him a companion. Mini me arrived and he was so gentle with her it was really heart warming.

She is the boss. She learned the routine so quickly. The only time I have seen him get mad at her is when she tries to eat his veg. Today he head butted her through the electric fencing because she tried to steal something he was eating. I don't think he intended to do this but he is so much bigger than her she's easy to send far.

She's a real squealer. She never stops and sometimes I think he looks at me as if to say "can you take her away before she wrecks my head?"

But I think in spite of himself he is happy with her company.

Laertes, son of Polonius. You were lucky.