Read Online Chewing the Cud by Dick King-Smith - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dick King-Smith
Ads: Link
fat and flagging Ben. Halfway across he was near enough to grasp the tail of the bull and throw his weight against it, like the anchorman in a tug-of-war team. And by the time that a hedge cut them off from my sight, Ben was down to a trot.
Pulling myself together, I found the bull pole and began to run across the paddock to find them, only to see, now walking towards me, the heaving, blowing figure of a breathless Ben meekly following a panting Gladwyn.
“D'you want me to put him on the pole?”
“Darw, boyo, the silly old bugger don't need no pole, see. He's run out of puff, silly old sod. Look here.” And I could see that Gladwyn had just one finger, the little one, hooked through Ben's nose ring.
Ben's story has a happy ending. When I decided to dispense with him, I felt strongly that I would like him to go to a really good home. And suddenly I thought, Of course! Tytherington! That'd be the life for him.
So I wrote to my old master there, and he was perfectly agreeable, either for old times' sake or, more probably, because I was asking too modest a price.
And for many years afterwards, I like to think, for he was only a youngster, the gleaming satiny black shape of Ben-the-bull roamed the rolling downlands with his many-colored heifers and passed on to hundreds of sons and daughters his quiet and amiable ways.
Chapter 7
P IGS
Wednesday 27 May
Monty off his food. Vet to see.
A s well as cow keeping, we began pig keeping. The poor old pig, linked always with gluttony, obesity, and squalor. As greedy as… as fat as… as dirty as… In fact, pigs are very like us. Their digestive systems are almost identical to ours, they are omnivorous as we are, and they very much enjoy their food as we do. They are also intelligent, strong-willed, and of an independent nature, all gifts we admire in ourselves. We can hardly blame them for fatness and greed, since we have bred andfed them for just such qualities, licking our lips with an anticipation that is almost cannibal as we lean upon the wall of a sty and look down upon these creatures that so nearly resemble us.
As for being dirty (by which we mean not just muddy but incontinent), given half a chance there is no cleaner animal on the farm. Humans, once out of diapers, pride themselves on confining their excretions to a particular spot, as opposed to the random discharge of cattle or sheep or poultry; and they instruct the dogs and cats that share their houses to respect that privilege. But without any training the pig from an early age will use a lavatory only if he is given one.
As for intelligence, when next you get a chance, look closely into a pig's eye. The expression in the eye of a dog is trusting, of a cat supercilious, of a cow ruminative, of a sheep vacuous. But the look in the eye of a pig is, quite simply, knowing. Other beasts think, This human is looking at me. The pig thinks, I am looking at this human. There is all the difference in the world.
My pig keeping could best be described as amateurish with flashes of professionalism. The pigs suffered more than the other livestock from my love of trying to do things on the cheap. For example, I fed my store pigs large amounts ofswill, cooked swill that arrived weekly in great steaming drums, filled with waste food of every imaginable kind, including on two occasions whole boiled cats. These had presumably fallen into the vats from some overhead mousing walkway and been cooked. The pigs chomped them up with gusto. They seemed to love swill. But they fattened rather slowly.
At Woodlands Farm we converted the old barn into a modest piggery, dividing the floor space with walls into a narrow feeding passage at the front, four roomy sties through the middle, and at the back a dung passage running the whole length and divided by a system of doors so that each sty had its own latrine. Mucking out was a simple matter of shoveling, brushing, and hosing down the dung passage, which forty pigs had meticulously used.
Pulling myself together, I found the bull pole and began to run across the paddock to find them, only to see, now walking towards me, the heaving, blowing figure of a breathless Ben meekly following a panting Gladwyn.
“D'you want me to put him on the pole?”
“Darw, boyo, the silly old bugger don't need no pole, see. He's run out of puff, silly old sod. Look here.” And I could see that Gladwyn had just one finger, the little one, hooked through Ben's nose ring.
Ben's story has a happy ending. When I decided to dispense with him, I felt strongly that I would like him to go to a really good home. And suddenly I thought, Of course! Tytherington! That'd be the life for him.
So I wrote to my old master there, and he was perfectly agreeable, either for old times' sake or, more probably, because I was asking too modest a price.
And for many years afterwards, I like to think, for he was only a youngster, the gleaming satiny black shape of Ben-the-bull roamed the rolling downlands with his many-colored heifers and passed on to hundreds of sons and daughters his quiet and amiable ways.
Chapter 7
P IGS
Wednesday 27 May
Monty off his food. Vet to see.
A s well as cow keeping, we began pig keeping. The poor old pig, linked always with gluttony, obesity, and squalor. As greedy as… as fat as… as dirty as… In fact, pigs are very like us. Their digestive systems are almost identical to ours, they are omnivorous as we are, and they very much enjoy their food as we do. They are also intelligent, strong-willed, and of an independent nature, all gifts we admire in ourselves. We can hardly blame them for fatness and greed, since we have bred andfed them for just such qualities, licking our lips with an anticipation that is almost cannibal as we lean upon the wall of a sty and look down upon these creatures that so nearly resemble us.
As for being dirty (by which we mean not just muddy but incontinent), given half a chance there is no cleaner animal on the farm. Humans, once out of diapers, pride themselves on confining their excretions to a particular spot, as opposed to the random discharge of cattle or sheep or poultry; and they instruct the dogs and cats that share their houses to respect that privilege. But without any training the pig from an early age will use a lavatory only if he is given one.
As for intelligence, when next you get a chance, look closely into a pig's eye. The expression in the eye of a dog is trusting, of a cat supercilious, of a cow ruminative, of a sheep vacuous. But the look in the eye of a pig is, quite simply, knowing. Other beasts think, This human is looking at me. The pig thinks, I am looking at this human. There is all the difference in the world.
My pig keeping could best be described as amateurish with flashes of professionalism. The pigs suffered more than the other livestock from my love of trying to do things on the cheap. For example, I fed my store pigs large amounts ofswill, cooked swill that arrived weekly in great steaming drums, filled with waste food of every imaginable kind, including on two occasions whole boiled cats. These had presumably fallen into the vats from some overhead mousing walkway and been cooked. The pigs chomped them up with gusto. They seemed to love swill. But they fattened rather slowly.
At Woodlands Farm we converted the old barn into a modest piggery, dividing the floor space with walls into a narrow feeding passage at the front, four roomy sties through the middle, and at the back a dung passage running the whole length and divided by a system of doors so that each sty had its own latrine. Mucking out was a simple matter of shoveling, brushing, and hosing down the dung passage, which forty pigs had meticulously used.
Similar Books
