Do Pigs get Moody - Feed them Seaweed

The terrible three with their tails

Lady Lavinia is pregnant again. Not by choice, by accident, thanks to Irish weather. Last May bank holiday it pissed rain all weekend. I woke on the Monday to find the electric fencing lying in a puddle. Lady Lavinia, Laertes and the terrible three all sauntering from the far field to the field behind the house looking for their breakfast. Laertes had a very satisfied, smug expression. He had got his bit. Later we saw him relieving himself. Pigs share so many characteristics with humans....

Well anyway back to the title. Do pigs get moody? I can categorically tell you they do. Lady Lavinia is in one hell of a mood ever since. She's narking at her rapidly growing piglets. She's narking at Laertes. She is even moaning to me. Maybe I should give her seaweed?

I have been following Ireland's Farmers Twitter account since it first started. In fact I was one of the first tweeting farmers. Don't laugh. I told them I wasn't a farmer, more a very, very small smallholder but they weren't deterred. So I did my stint. After that it was taken over by different organisers and each week a different farmer did their week, explaining to the great unwashed what they do. Then one "farmer" who is a very, very big butcher did his week and used it to promote his business (not his farm). Just this week another "farmer" took over to tell us how he raises thousands of pigs.

When any of the great unwashed expressed concern at any of the intensive production methods, the reply was "well we feed seaweed!" Gosh, if only all of life's problems could be solved by eating seaweed.

You dock piglet's tails. Well we feed seaweed.
You keep sows in farrowing crates. Well we feed seaweed (and apple juice.)
The pigs can't root. Well we feed seaweed and they play with a dangling football.
The pigs are always inside. Well we feed seaweed and they have skylights.
The sows are moody. Well we feed seaweed.

Incidentally (what I did learn this week) if you keep more than 80 sows together they won't fight as they don't recognise each other and they don't remember which one pissed them off. Have to say if I was stuffed into a maternity ward with 80 other women I probably wouldn't remember either.

While I have to admit that if pigs have to be raised intensively (inhumanly as far as I am concerned) this system is not the worst. In fact it is probably outstanding in a bad lot. The pigs are raised in purpose built housing with natural light on rubber matting and with Radio Kerry to keep them entertained. That would be torture for me but hey, maybe pigs don't mind bland. The fact that normal pigs and piglets spend probably 80% of their day rooting and nosing about is totally irrelevant here.

Well they are fed seaweed and they have a dangly ball to play with and they can listen to Radio Kerry and they don't get sunburn. The boar was barred off from the sows but he could see them and he had a ball game to amuse him and he could listen to Radio Kerry. Wish that could have done it for Laertes who did his very best to murder me as I kept him from his woman with a strand of electric fencing.

The fact remains that they never get to stick their nose in soil, they never get to eat fresh grass, they never get to wallow, they never get to lie in the sun or get sunburned, they never get to leg it into their house when the heavens open, they never get to watch ESB workers climb poles or delivery lorries trundle down a laneway.

They never get to be pigs.

So you get to buy a €1 chop.........

Pay €4 for a chop that will knock the socks off you with taste, juiciness, flavour, moistness and you know the poor bastard that died to give you this experience had a life.

It's your choice.


Signed:  A Bitter Woman.

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.

Rusty and The Bandit

Sadly Mrs Pig hurt her back and had to go to the Abba concert (abattoir) so we are now the new residents.

Herself has named us Rusty and The Bandit. We are a Saddleback/Duroc cross. We are growing very fast. We love all the space in the big sunny field. We also love our little house. It gets really warm when the sun shines into it in the morning and we like to go back for a snooze after breakfast. It doesn't leak even in the heaviest rain.

The pesky dogs are really scared of the hurty white stuff so they leave us alone although one decided that she liked the look of some of our food so she jumped through it. You should have heard her squeal. We laughed our heads off at her.

There's a big fella that calls into see us. He can speak pig language. It's really confusing because it sounds just like us but it really makes no sense. We come out every time to see him though because he gives us a rub on the belly or behind the ears and we love that.

It's getting very cold at night now but we just bury down into all the straw and snuggle very close together so we are quite comfortable.

Life is good.

Our Diet

Herself says that if you eat something do you ever wonder what it has eaten?

We are pigs so we are omnivores which means we eat basically the same as herself.  We love fruit, particularly sweet fruit like plums, pears and strawberries.  We eat them first and then later the other icky vegetables like carrots and potatoes and we are not keen on cabbage or broccoli.  Herself says we remind her of small children.

We also eat barley and we really love it.  Herself adds some water to it and we fight over who can keep their head in the pot longest.  Rasher usually bites me when I am greedy.

 Herself decided she was not going to feed us pig food because it has genetically modified soya and maize in it.  It actually says it on the label.  She asked a few feed manufacturers about getting GM free but only one even researched the possibility of getting some in.  It worked out to be about 4 times the price.

We have made a right mess of the garden and it's all mucky now with the rain.  But we root about under the grass and we find slugs, worms, grubs and roots.  This is why our noses are always dirty.  Herself says that people panic when they see the mess we make of land but we actually do a lot of good.  We turn the soil around very gently, aerating it and rotivating it.

When we become *whisper* "rashers and sausages" or even pork belly or ham we will taste more gamey because of our diet.  Our meat will be darker and have more flavour.  
diet
We are very happy with our diet so far and hope herself continues to get strawberries from the nice fruit and veg man.  He knows we love strawberries now and he always tries to give her some for us.

Tags: GM free feed  Pig rearing GM free  Pigs