Squealing from the feeling! Squeaking from the freaking! Oinking from the boinking!

Before anyone spazzes, that's a quote from a PG-13 movie called Down Periscope.  We watched it this past week, and were surprised at how this quote seemed to sum up last weekend.   The flu has us all under the weather, and we can't seem to win for losing when it comes to breeding Porkchop again.  She came into season, yet again.  Not too late for Ham Bacon pigs, but too late for show pigs.  Thankfully her daughter was bred to a York boar very similar and did not come back into season, so we'll still be able to get our show pigs.  Disappointing though. 

People have said that when a sow skips a cycle or two, it is harder to get them to be bred.  I don't want to think it's a problem with the boar, so we may end up doing a little piggy douche to make her 'feelin' fresh' again.  We'll see.  I hope this time, she takes.

But, speaking of this time.  Over the weekend, mom casually mentioned to us that Porkchop wasn't eating, and was acting like a lunatic in her pen. 

 

Pigs are not unlike humans when it comes to PMS.  They get crampy, don't feel like eating much more than something sweet and not good for them, and they turn into royal, hateful pains.  They carry on, pissing and moaning, mnyah mnyah mnyah mnyahing nagging like there's nothing you can ever do right, and they're so abused simply by being in your company.  Underlying all of this is an insane hormonal shift that ultimately results in only one thing being able to shut her up...

 

 

Problem is, Porkchop doesn't like trailers... and Schnicklefritz ALSO doesn't like trailers.  They were half a mile apart.   It might as well have been half a world apart, honestly. 

 

 

 

 

None of us were relishing the idea of having to load either of them up to get them to each other.  We contemplated borrowing a boar again, but then scolded ourselves for thinking of that idea.  We had spent good money on Schnicklefritz.  We had to use him, else it was a waste.  Then... it hit us. 

 

 

All that time spent training your pig how to walk with a stick, for what purpose?  Just to show them?  Not all pigs are sold at fair.  Not all boars are sold at shows.  Some pigs are kept, like Porkchop.  So... the question was, did she remember the stick?  We decided to take a risk, and let her out of her pen.

 

 

I'll admit, the immediate results were not encouraging.  Like a rocket, she flew out of that pen and through the gate to the driveway.  At first, I thought this was going to be easy, but as quickly as she had exited, she ricocheted off of a teensy pebble, off the driveway, running along the hillside like a freaking mountain goat, behind the barns, in the opposite direction.  Frantically, I told Kevin to run across the lot, open the gate on the OTHER side, and see if she was dumb enough to come back in. 

 

She was.

 

 

Whew.  So, now we knew she could possibly go through any opening that a cow would go through, and we set up appropriate human barricades aka. children.  Porkchop went out the gate for the driveway, yet again, in a perfect loop, but this time, she started down the long gravel driveway to the road up ahead.  So far, so good.

 

 

 

When we got up to the top of the driveway, Kevin opened the gate, and Porkchop exited into the road.  This was the first moment we actually had fear that we might not be able to control her.  I explained to Tiffany and Kevin that for centuries, drovers in England moved their livestock from one pasture to another by driving them.  If they can do whole herds of sheep, cattle and pigs, we can do one sow.  One very big, very long, very hormonal sow.

 

Ok, so maybe it was a moment of insanity, fueled by the flu delirium that we were all experiencing.  But by God, we were going to try it.  Slowly, a tap here, and a tap there, Porkchop began to traverse Williamsburg Road, plid plodding along, stopping for a second here or there to nibble on an errant corn husk that had flew out of the back of Arnold's trailer on his way to Rem's dairy farm. 

 

Everything was going well, it was about an hour before sunset, we figured we'd have plenty of time.  Then a car could be heard coming down the road, way too fast of course on these country roads, and we ushered Porkchop into the ditch.  Waving the stick in front of her snoot, she just sort of stopped, confused.  She was walking like a good girl, and now we wanted her to stop?

 

When the car came down the straight stretch, they slowed to an almost terminable pace.  The people in the car couldn't believe what they were seeing, and they stopped, rolling down the window.  Inside my head, I groaned.  For crying out loud.  We were trying to move an animal here.  "What?" I snarled.  They were all laughing, and the man chortled out the window, "That's some pig!"

 

We thanked him, and he moved on.  Moving Porkchop back out of the ditch, she happily continued on, not minding one bit the vehicles moving around her.  Another person stopped to say that we were walking the bacon off of her, and then some idiot thought it'd be a good idea to park at an intersection and flick a strobe light on.  Yes.  Because flashing lights and animals always have gone well together since the dawn of the LED...

 

 

 

 

For my friends who are not livestock people, let me explain.  Lights are to pigs what fire was to cavemen.  They don't know if it's God, or fire, or some sorcery, but like most things in this world that have lived to evolve, they have an innate fight or flight instinct.  It is better to run away, and fight another day, than to stay and be eaten by the crazy flashing light.   Porkchop had decided halfway there, after seeing this flashing strobe, that she wasn't sticking around, and began to turn back. 

 

Normally, you can't stop a 600 pound sow from doing something she really wants to do, and this includes fleeing.  However, Tiffany thinking rather quickly, jumped up on her back and she immediately locked up.  Kevin ran ahead and asked the infernal idiot to turn off his light.  We didn't have a wild animal loose, we meant to have her out, and we were moving her, and he wasn't helping matters!

 

By the time Kevin got back, and Tiffany slipped off Porkchop's back, she had forgotten the light, and was able to be turned back in the right direction, and began walking again as if nothing had happened.  By a quarter mile, she had learned that the sound of cars meant we were going to be asking her to go in the ditch, and she did so without us having to ask her from that point on.  Cars that had already passed had begun to pass us again, filled with people and their camera phones.   I have a feeling we'll see her on YouTube one of these days. 

 

 

It was getting dark, and we were turning in the gate of the Camp.  As soon as those squishy toes felt the gravel of the driveway, she knew where she was, and like a mad pig, ran down the 300 yard driveway to where Schnicklefritz was waiting for her.  She locked up when he grunted before we could get her in the pen, so we had to let him out.  They made their greetings... *cough* and then she went willingly in the pen.  High fives were had all around, and a feeling of accomplishment was had by all.  It was awesome.