And there in the wood......

"They sailed away for a year and a day

to the land where the bong tree grows

and there in the wood a piggy wig stood

with a ring through the end of his nose.."

(from The Owl and the Pussy Cat by Edward Lear)

What an exciting day it's been for Precious piglet and her brothers! The cold snap finally abated and 'Operation Pigs to the Woods' was able to swing into action.

They've been in the Old Stalls since weaning from Ginger. That's all well and good and jolly warm through the cold stuff; handy too for dealing with necessary visits from the vet and bidding farewell to siblings. But palatial and interesting for pigs? No way. (And it gets pretty smelly

However, before they could move out a new pen had to be secured and another ark delivered. What really taxed our brains for a while was where to locate them. We've got plenty of acres but most of it is either open pasture with no shelter from the sun (except hedges) or relatively tended gardens.... neither suitable for pigs. And we needed somewhere away from Mangel to give Precious time to mature without his amorous attentions. She might not mind but at c.90Kg (possibly more) .... he could be rather overwhelming for a young lady.

Eventually the ideal place came to mind - an area of old and well grown woodland alongside our drive, completely 'private' and sheltered from all weathers by a dense screen of yew and holly hedging. Probably planted to shelter the house from the fierce Easterly winds, it's of no use for anything else --- but a potential piggie paradise? Seemed just the thing..... and with the ark and fencing in place we just had to wait for more clement weather: even though the wood is dry and sheltered it would have been beyond unkind to move the piglets during the coldest spell this year!

With Thursday dawning mild and clear, therefore, Operation Ps to the W swung into action -after our breakfast and before theirs (pigs always more obliging when expecting food). The usual (when moving pigs) tactical considerations were employed: number of people, location of trailer/hurdles/unforeseen temptations (like open spaces). Step 1: load them from the stalls into the limousine ... well they thought it was - all lovely clean sawdust with a few bits of food thrown in to make it more appealing. Step 2: move piglets and limousine adjacent to woods. Step 3: reverse limousine in direction of pen in woods (not as easy as it sounds!). Step 4: secure 'run' to pen with hurdles. Step 5: drop ramp and entice piglets to woodland pen.

Actually, it all went very smoothly: the most difficult bit was enticing them all into the trailer - two went in quite quickly but the other two made a meal of it - breaking through the hurdle back into their familiar stall several times before human intervention saw them half lifted and half dragged (squealing blue murder) in the direction of the ramp. "Oh that's what you wanted" they then said, meekly wandering up and into the trailer! "Why didn't you say?"

When they got to the other end and saw the woodland they could hardly believe their eyes. Run? They didn't stop - for about an hour. Up and down, side to side, to and fro, back and forth. Running into trees, pretending they were scary and darting away. Sampling bits of greenery - more scary and running away. Gosh - all those bits of dead tree trunk just waiting to be nibbled. Talk about piggie paradise. We put some food down for them but they were, like "Food? How boring" and just kept on running. So eventually we left them to it.

An hour or so later when we went back they were all fast asleep in the ark. Four hours later when we went out to feed them tea they were still in the ark fast asleep..... they probably thought they'd died and gone to heaven.

(and, no, none of them have rings in their noses....!)