Wednesday 9 May 2012

Delinquent turns pandemonium

On 23 March 2010 Delila gave birth to a litter by Clyde (ex. Precious & Tang) which soon acquired the moniker of 'Delila's Delinquents' - for obvious reason: they were always out and about in the furthermost reaches of RectoryReserve and always up to no good. Followers of Bestestgundog on Twitter will see her and her littermates as the background to his profile page!
Be that as it may, Andromeda grew into a handsome young lady and, being of interesting bloodlines, we decided to send her across to the Nice Mr Thomas who had bought J.D. from us: J.D. (Jack Daniels of the Little Tots Litter was of a different bloodline from Samson & Mangal) was a nice young boar and gave her two litters, the last being born just two months back. Andromeda's developed her 'delinquent' tendencies whilst she's been away from Rectory Reserve. "She's jumped out of her pen" the Nice Mr Thomas informed us the day before she was due to farrow. "She's re-united herself with her piglets" he told us after he'd weaned her from them! Inbetween she'd climbed numerous fences to get where she wanted to go.  We had been warned.
We brought her home on Tuesday. She loaded straight from her pen, totally disregarding her piglets and best pal. She came straight off this end. "Can't understand why she got such a reputation" I thought to myself.
It was a lovely afternoon. We all admired her greatly:beautiful black curly coat, lovely big ears, compact build. Samson wasn't impressed.  But all the other boys were.
"They're all vying for her attention!" Linda reported later...... Later still I walked the dogs past their pen. One of the younger boys had got through the fence to Andromeda & Samson's quarters. Samson was nowhere to be seen. He knows when to exert his authority and it wasn't just yet!
Returning from our walk, all the pigs appeared to be in the right place.
Not what I saw this morning. All the wrong pigs were in the wrong places: Andromeda in with 5 young boys; then 3 younger boys in with 5 young boys and Andromeda : then Andromeda back with Samson; and everyone yelling and squealing for attention - or breakfast, which is much the same thing in early-morning-pigworld! Half an hour and some fence repairing later peace was restored. "Call that Pandemonium?" remarked The Big Boss when I reported to him over breakfast: "All sounds pretty tame to me!" "Well you weren't in the thick of it!" I thought to myself.....
Explaining events to Linda later in the day, we agreed the boys would have to move. We can't risk the Delinquent coming into season and attracting their attention - not to mention causing a riot - then. So they've been moved back to the formerly-rejected-as-too-muddy pen prior to being moved off-site (hopefully) at the end of the week.
That'll calm the Delinquent down and end the Pandemonium - I hope. And anyway, Samson was making up to her later this afternoon.... and took her home to his ark..... he's such a nice Boar..... and didn't at all seem to mind that the Beautiful Black Pig had been transformed overnight into the dreadfully muddy sow he saw this morning.....................

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