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Authors: Dick King-Smith
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The sties themselves would be spotless.
The conversion of the barn was a sensible enough idea: a good investment and well designed. The same could not be said of the housing that I provided for the sows to farrow outside. Most people would have invested in good, strong, weatherproof huts built for the purpose, with stout floors and farrowing rails, and skids and proper linkage for easy moving. Not I, I bought a job lot of old fowl houses. I removed the perches but left the nest boxes on as an escape area for piglets at risk of being overlaid. I also tookthe wheels off and thus lowered the ancient structures to the ground, having just enough wit to realize that otherwise a 350-pound sow would go straight through the floor.
When we came to move the first of them to fresh ground, in a field aptly named the Wilderness, we hooked a chain onto it and pulled merrily away with the tractor. Whereupon the whole thing fell to pieces like a pack of cards. Later movings were nervous occasions, each hen-house tied up with rope like a giant parcel. Gladwyn and I would proceed with the utmost caution, one driving the Ferguson at snail's pace, the other monitoring progress with anxious shouts of “Hold it! She's twisting!” or “Steady! The floor's going!”
There was, however, one successful economy, the fencing of the Wood. This three-acre block of humps and hollows covered with a tangle of trees and undergrowth was useless for any other purpose. It would be ideal, I thought, to run pigs in. For shelter there were two good brick-built Nissen huts, in which the Home Guard had once stored their ammunition. There were many oak trees, whose acorns in due season would be gratefully received. And there would be no need to ring the pigs, for they could root away to their hearts' content. True, there was no drinking water laid on, but that was easily solved — an old bath at the nearest point to the tap and a length ofhose. Why spend money on a proper field tank and piping? No need even for feeding troughs. Take a bag of pignuts and throw them on the ground.
The only problem was one of containment. The perimeter of the Wood was perhaps 600 yards, of which 100 were walled. So I should need 500 yards of pig wire, a formidable outlay. And in practical terms, though the pigs would be unable to get through or over it, how could I be certain that they wouldn't squeeze under it? Somewhere, especially on such rough and steep ground, someone would find or force a way beneath the bottom strand, and the thought of three or four dozen pigs making their way to Bristol or Chipping Sodbury was nightmarish. Any fence must be pigproof or I should never sleep easy.
I went to the sawmills. “
Coffin boards,” said the sawyer. “It's coffin boards you want.”
“Coffin boards?”
“Like these.” And he showed me a stack of them, long slices of elm an inch or so thick and six feet in length. “Not good enough for the undertaker, these ones. Got a split or a shake or a knothole in them. Ideal for your job.”
“But they're only two foot high. Any pig'd get over them.”
“Ah, for the base to your fence, I do mean, young man.Set them well down flush to the ground with a stake driven against them either end, and then all you do want is a bit of wire on top of 'em.”
And that way it wouldn't need to be so high, I thought, so I bought not 500 but 250 yards of pig wire and Gladwyn and I solemnly cut it all in half longwise.
And then round the Wood we went with our stakes and our coffin boards and our foreshortened wire. And over the years hundreds of pigs lived there happily, and not one ever escaped.
This kind of success story was not the general rule. Take my dealings with dealers. Later, in the heyday of the Woodlands pigs when I was running ten sows with my own boar and producing at least 150 weaners a year, there were plenty to fill the sties and a surplus to sell. But in the first days, when the only pig on the place was a large white gilt
The conversion of the barn was a sensible enough idea: a good investment and well designed. The same could not be said of the housing that I provided for the sows to farrow outside. Most people would have invested in good, strong, weatherproof huts built for the purpose, with stout floors and farrowing rails, and skids and proper linkage for easy moving. Not I, I bought a job lot of old fowl houses. I removed the perches but left the nest boxes on as an escape area for piglets at risk of being overlaid. I also tookthe wheels off and thus lowered the ancient structures to the ground, having just enough wit to realize that otherwise a 350-pound sow would go straight through the floor.
When we came to move the first of them to fresh ground, in a field aptly named the Wilderness, we hooked a chain onto it and pulled merrily away with the tractor. Whereupon the whole thing fell to pieces like a pack of cards. Later movings were nervous occasions, each hen-house tied up with rope like a giant parcel. Gladwyn and I would proceed with the utmost caution, one driving the Ferguson at snail's pace, the other monitoring progress with anxious shouts of “Hold it! She's twisting!” or “Steady! The floor's going!”
There was, however, one successful economy, the fencing of the Wood. This three-acre block of humps and hollows covered with a tangle of trees and undergrowth was useless for any other purpose. It would be ideal, I thought, to run pigs in. For shelter there were two good brick-built Nissen huts, in which the Home Guard had once stored their ammunition. There were many oak trees, whose acorns in due season would be gratefully received. And there would be no need to ring the pigs, for they could root away to their hearts' content. True, there was no drinking water laid on, but that was easily solved — an old bath at the nearest point to the tap and a length ofhose. Why spend money on a proper field tank and piping? No need even for feeding troughs. Take a bag of pignuts and throw them on the ground.
The only problem was one of containment. The perimeter of the Wood was perhaps 600 yards, of which 100 were walled. So I should need 500 yards of pig wire, a formidable outlay. And in practical terms, though the pigs would be unable to get through or over it, how could I be certain that they wouldn't squeeze under it? Somewhere, especially on such rough and steep ground, someone would find or force a way beneath the bottom strand, and the thought of three or four dozen pigs making their way to Bristol or Chipping Sodbury was nightmarish. Any fence must be pigproof or I should never sleep easy.
I went to the sawmills. “
Coffin boards,” said the sawyer. “It's coffin boards you want.”
“Coffin boards?”
“Like these.” And he showed me a stack of them, long slices of elm an inch or so thick and six feet in length. “Not good enough for the undertaker, these ones. Got a split or a shake or a knothole in them. Ideal for your job.”
“But they're only two foot high. Any pig'd get over them.”
“Ah, for the base to your fence, I do mean, young man.Set them well down flush to the ground with a stake driven against them either end, and then all you do want is a bit of wire on top of 'em.”
And that way it wouldn't need to be so high, I thought, so I bought not 500 but 250 yards of pig wire and Gladwyn and I solemnly cut it all in half longwise.
And then round the Wood we went with our stakes and our coffin boards and our foreshortened wire. And over the years hundreds of pigs lived there happily, and not one ever escaped.
This kind of success story was not the general rule. Take my dealings with dealers. Later, in the heyday of the Woodlands pigs when I was running ten sows with my own boar and producing at least 150 weaners a year, there were plenty to fill the sties and a surplus to sell. But in the first days, when the only pig on the place was a large white gilt
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