No homestead can
be without hogs or goats! We hope to be able to
locate some of these species to add to our unique "preservation"
homestead! Until we do, you can click on them and
learn more about them.
Our goal at the LAZY "B" HOMESTEAD is to provide homes for unwanted animals as well as maintain a natural, "back to nature" lifestyle. We will make every attempt to utilize species that are in need of help to full fill our homestead needs!
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A quote from Winston Churchill:
" Odd things these animals. All dogs look up to you. All cats look down at you. Only a pig looks at you like an equal."
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 Pot Bellied Pig |
Mulefoot
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 Choctaw Hogs |
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Nigerian Dwarf Goat
Status: Recovering
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Two
miniature goat breeds are found in the United States, the Nigerian Dwarf
and the Pygmy. These breeds share a common genetic origin in the
variable population of small African goats imported to the United States
between the 1930s and 1950s. Used originally as exhibition animals in
zoos, the goats later became popular as companion animals.
The
milk is high in butterfat and makes excellent cheese and
butter. Does generally breed year-round and produce twins. They can be
milked for up to ten months, but can also be allowed to dry up on their
own if milking is no longer desired. These production qualities make
Nigerian Dwarf goats good candidates for small scale milk production
where a year-round supply of a moderate amount of milk is the goal.
The versatility of
the Nigerian Dwarf, as well as its hardiness and gentle disposition,
have given it great appeal, and the breed’s population has increased
significantly in recent years, registering nearly 7000 purebred animals
in 2002. The breeder community faces a challenge, however, in
determining the parameters of the breed. Selection for production
qualities may tend to increase the size of the goats, while selection as
a companion animal may emphasize small size. Breed conservation will be
best served by building consensus around a vision for the breed that
includes its unique combination of characteristics.
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Tennessee Fainting Goat
The breed's history can be traced back to the 1880s. An itinerant farm laborer named John Tinsley came to central Tennessee, reputedly from Nova Scotia. Tinsley had with him four unusual, stiff goats. Goats of this type gradually became known across the region. They were less apt to climb fences and escape from pastures than other goats, and their muscular conformation and high reproductive rate were also valued. Farmers began to appreciate them, and the numbers of "stiff," "nervous," or "fainting" goats increased. During the 1950s, some Tennessee Fainting goats were taken to the hill country of central Texas. They were further selected for meat qualities, including larger size, and came to be known as "Wooden Leg" goats. In the late 1980s, both the Tennessee and Texas branches of this breed were rediscovered. The new enthusiasm for the goats diverged into two major endeavors. One group of breeders worked in the historic tradition, emphasizing the meat qualities of the animals and selecting for growth rate, conformation, and reproductive efficiency. The other group selected for extreme stiffness and small size, promoting the breed as a novelty animal. As a landrace breed, Tennessee Fainting goats were always variable in size. This variability, emphasized by recent selection, has given rise to a population which ranges in weight from 60-175 pounds. Heavily muscled conformation is consistent among the goats. The ears of Tennessee goats are larger and more horizontal than Swiss breed goats, but smaller and less drooping than Nubian or Spanish goats. The facial profile is usually concave. Most goats are horned, and horns vary from large and twisted to small and simple. While most of the goats have short hair, long haired goats are not unusual and some animals produce cashmere. Tennessee Fainting goats are found in almost all colors known in goats. Kidding season is always exciting, as new color combinations pop up. Since does like to keep their kids hidden for a few days, looking for these multicolored kids can be like hunting Easter eggs. Does are prolific, with an extended breeding season, and some does will bear kids every six months. Most does produce twins or triplets regularly and have plenty of milk to raise them. This is falcon and Marie our fainting goats from Slatebrook Farm. They will be sharing thier first summer along with our first summer together on the Lazy B Homestead! The months of January and February will be spent preparing for their arrival!
The Tennessee Fainting goat breed is gaining attention for its combination of meat traits with reproductive efficiency, and it is increasingly recognized as an important genetic resource in the United States. Goats are being used both as purebreds and for crossing with other breeds, especially the Boer goat, a recent import from South Africa. While crossbreeding can demonstrate the genetic value of the Tennessee Fainting goat, overuse of purebred does for crossing would threaten the survival of this unique and important American goat breed. It is a high conservation priority. Status: Threatend
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The
goats of this breed have a host of names: Myotonic, Tennessee Fainting,
Tennessee Meat, Texas Wooden Leg, Stiff, Nervous, and Scare goats. The
names refer to a breed characteristic known as myotonia congenita, a
condition in which the muscle cells experience prolonged contraction
when the goat is startled. The transitory stiffness associated with
these contractions can cause the goat to fall down. This is not a true
faint, but a muscular phenomenon unrelated to the nervous system. The
degree of stiffness varies from goat to goat, with some showing a
consistently stiff response and others exhibiting stiffness only rarely.
Choctaw Hog
When the Choctaw and other Native Americans first migrated from the deep South to the Oklahoma Territory in the early 1800s, they took their animals with them, and this was the beginning of the Oklahoma Choctaw hog population. In the 1830s, the United States government removed the Five Civilized Tribes from Mississippi and Alabama, forcing them to move to Oklahoma; hogs were also taken in this migration. The modern breed’s name comes from the Choctaw tribe, with whom it has been associated for so long. Choctaw hogs have changed little in appearance during the past 150 years. They are small in size, weighing about 120 pounds, and are black with occasional white markings. The ears are erect to slightly drooping. Many Choctaws have fleshy wattles on each side of the neck. The toes are fused, forming a single, mule-like hoof. The -combination of the distinctive hoof and wattles are consistent with the breed’s Spanish origin, and these traits are often found in populations that descend from Spanish stocks. The Mulefoot hog, for example, shares some of its physical characteristics with the Choctaw, though the two breeds have diverged over the past century and are now distinct from each other. The Choctaw, as a pure Spanish breed, is also distinct from the “Pineywoods Rooter” and other genetically mixed feral hog populations still found in the Southeast. The Choctaw breed was shaped by natural selection, and it is obvious that Choctaw hogs are built for survival. They have long legs and are heavier in the forequarters than in the rear, -making them both fast and athletic. This conformation has its advantages in the wild, but it does not produce much of a market carcass. Today, Choctaws in Oklahoma are managed as they were traditionally. They are earmarked and then allowed to run free on the open range. The hogs require little care and are able to forage for their own food, including roots, plants, acorns, and berries. Periodically, the hogs are rounded up, usually being trailed with dogs and then trapped. Once captured, the young ones are ear marked and sorted. Those slated for market are confined and fed on corn to increase their weight. Those not needed for sale are released, zipping back into the woods as quickly as they can. People familiar with docile barnyard animals are amazed at the speed and agility of Choctaw hogs. At the same time, Choctaws kept in confinement can also become quite tame. The
Choctaw breed is critically rare, with a population estimated at a few
hundred animals. Almost all of them are found in the few counties of
southeast Oklahoma that were formerly the Choctaw Nation. Few commercial
opportunities are available for the breed’s use, and lacking any
economic return to support conservation efforts, the Choctaw faces
substantial obstacles to -survival. Nevertheless, the breed is a high
conservation priority because it has qualities which may be of
importance in the -future.
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 Vietnamese
Pot Bellied Pig The increasingly popular Vietnamese Pot Bellied Pig has the potential to be an excellent pet, given the right amount of care and love. Some might say that man's best friend may not be a dog but a Pot Bellied Pig! Imported by Canadian Keith Connell and first sold in North America in 1986, the Vietnamese Pot-Bellied Pig has a history of being a prized pet among the wealthy elite. Since the 1980s the Pot Bellied Pig has become popular among people all over the world! They are much more common than they were and their previously high prices have dropped making them more affordable for all! As babies the Vietnamese Pot-Bellied Pig is adorable! They can be held and cuddled and kept easily inside the house! Many people are attracted to young Pot Bellied Pigs and forget that they grow to be fairly large. For this reason a Vietnamese Pot-Bellied Pig may more difficult to care for after it matures. It is recommended that both males and females be spayed or neutered at a young age; males who still have their sexual organs will emit a pungent odor, and females may be subject to mood swings when in heat and can be very difficult to deal with. The Vietnamese Pot Bellied Pig's rise to popularity stems, not only from its good looks but also from its loving and friendly temperament. They are intelligent animals that develop strong bonds with their owners! Some individuals may need their canine teeth clipped; the pot-bellied pig can bite, and if the canines are not trimmed it can be very painful. Non-castrated males are the most commonly known biters. Remember that Vietnamese Pot-bellied Pigs enjoy your company, but generally do not always like to be picked up; being lifted can make them nervous. Vietnamese Pot Bellied Pigs need plenty of fresh water and a large wallowing area, because like most other pigs, the Pot-Bellied Pig likes to roll around in mud to keep cool. You should bear this in mind as they can make a mess if let indoors covered in wet mud. If you plan on keeping more than one Vietnamese Pot Bellied Pig, it is important to monitor their behavior together. A dominant male will almost always rise from the masses, taking whatever food you leave out and squirreling it away in a safe location so he can eat it himself. Vietnamese Pot-bellied Pigs are usually fed fruits and vegetables, dog chow, and bread or potatoes. These pigs have an advanced sense of how to communicate and will use their trademark grunting and squealing to get what they want or boss other pigs. They are very social and love human interaction and especially petting! The Pot-bellied Pig is an intelligent animal that responds well to training. Most can be trained to use a litter box with the right amount of care and discipline. If you treat these animals well, they will provide you with a long, satisfying relationship, given that their life expectancy is 12 to 13 years if they are well cared for. As an Adult, the Vietnamese Pot-Bellied Pig is small for a pig and averages about 150 pounds, measuring around two and a half feet long from head to tail. Individuals as small as 60 pounds have been reported and some may grow as large as 205 pounds. They have tusks that measure up to six inches in length, and have pug-like, upturned faces that many find absolutely adorable. They have large bellies that will almost drag on the ground, hence the name. Their color is black, typically, although they are known to come in some other varieties such as spotted, but this is highly uncommon and usually the result of cross-breeding. The skin is loose and quite saggy. Keith Connell originally imported the Vietnamese Pot-Bellied Pig into Canada in 1985, soon after they were introduced to the United States. Initially they were most commonly sold to zoos. Their cute looks and friendly dispositions make them grow increasingly popular in the pet trade. They became very popular among the wealthy in the early 1990s; pregnant Vietnamese Pot-Bellied Pigs went for over 20,000 American dollars in their heyday! Today they are priced similarly to a pure bred dog. Most Vietnamese Pot-Bellied Pigs can make poor indoor pets as they have a territorial instinct. They may threaten and often bite members of the family. Over bred in some areas they are found on the streets and being destroyed in animal shelters. While they can be forced to do tricks and walk on leashes they do best when allowed to live in a more natural setting outdoors with plenty of room to roam and a warm place to sleep in the company of other pigs. The suggested pen size should not be less than 50-feet X 150-feet. Acreage is preferred. It is not advised to house them with horses, donkeys or llamas. Their shelter must be warm and dry and draft free. Additionally it should be kept deep in straw or hay. Shelter temperatures should not be allowed to fall below freezing. Deep all day shade should be available and they need mud or a wading pool for cooling off. It is not advised to feed scraps or dog food. Both of these can cause obesity and this can cause a variety of health problems. Pigs need a balanced ration of pig feed, or another balanced pig finisher. Concentrates, growers, horse feed, cow feed and corn are not recommended. The average Vietnamese Pot-Bellied Pig will eat 1 cup of pig feed twice a day. Feed plenty of raw vegetables and some raw fruits daily as well. Canned vegetables can be fed if fresh are not available, but fresh is always preferred. Plenty of grazing and rooting area is required.
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.JPG "This is Lucy Lu our pot bellied pig.")
.JPG "She is a real sweet heart. She was checked by our vet in Danville, PA as soon as we acquired her.")
.JPG "She was shy and skidish at first but is quickly \"warming up\" to the family.")
Mulefoot HogThe Mulefoot is an American hog breed that is named for its most distinctive feature, the solid, non-cloven hoof which looks like the hoof of a mule. This characteristic will occasionally occur as a single gene mutation, producing occasional “mulefooted” pigs within a variety of other breeds. In contrast, the Mulefoot breed is consistent in appearance and behavior, with qualities that have made it valuable in American history and a conservation priority today.Today, the Mulefoot is the rarest of American swine breeds. The origin of the Mulefoot is unclear, and many theories have arisen about its links with mulefooted stocks in Asia and Europe. The breed is more likely to have descended from the Spanish hogs brought to the Americas beginning in the 1500s. It shares some attributes with the Choctaw hog, and the two breeds likely come from the same ancestral stock, which was loosely selected and managed until the late 1800s.
Mulefoot hogs are compact in appearance and weigh 400–600 pounds. They are solid black with white points occurring rarely. The ears are pricked forward. Some pigs have wattles on either side of the neck, though this is not common. The breed forages well and thrives under extensive husbandry. They have litters of 5-6 piglets but may have as many as 12. The sows make excellent and calm mothers.
Status: Critical
Breed clubs and
associations:
Our Hog Photo Gallery
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By
1900, the Mulefoot had become a standardized breed. It was valued for
ease of -fattening and production of meat, lard, and especially hams.
Mulefoot hogs were distributed throughout the Corn Belt. They were also
common along the Mississippi River Valley, where farmers ranged their
hogs on the islands in the river, putting them out to forage in the
spring and collecting them in the fall. In the early 1900s there were
two Mulefoot breed associations and over 200 herds registering purebred
stock.
The
Mulefoot breed is critically rare, with fewer than 150 purebred hogs
documented today. Most of these originated in the Holliday herd of
Missouri, which is believed to be the last purebred herd in existence.
Hereford Hog
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"Holly Hogzilla Batman!"
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Good Company and Good FoodThe best way to save the endangered mulefoot pig is to eat it.
By Mike Sula
JUST A FEW weeks from giving birth, Crystal sprawled in southern Wisconsin quack grass, her swollen nipples exposed to the April chill. Cong ambled over and kissed her on the face. “He’s just asking for sex,” said Mark Kessenich, observing from beyond the paddock’s wire fencing. “He’s a typical male.” Crystal, a ten-month-old black American mulefoot pig, wasn’t having it. She lumbered to her feet, offered her hindquarters to Cong—the boar that bred her in January—and directed a jet of urine toward his snout. Crystal and Cong are two of fewer than 300 registered purebred mulefoots alive today, members of the most rare and endangered of domestic swine breeds. Their stewards are hoping to save them by convincing people they’re good to eat. “If you treat them just like precious zoo animals that’s how they get extinct,” says Linda Derrickson, who’s Kessenich’s wife and partner on the 154-acre Hillspring Farm outside of Blanchardville. “That does not create enough farmers raising them. Farmers have to see some kind of monetary incentive to really do it on a scale that preserves these breeds.” Derrickson and Kessenich, former Madison restaurateurs, have been raising rare-breed cattle, sheep, goats, and chickens for more than 12 years. But these are the first pigs Kessenich has ever bred and the first for Derrickson since her youth. The couple has two other mulefoots aside from Cong and Crystal—another male, named Churchill, and another gilt, or female that has yet to give birth, called Cherry. Derrickson and Kessenich plan to sell most of Crystal and Cherry’s offspring, but they don’t expect to make a killing. They’ve lived on this particular farm for about two and a half years trying to grow their own organic food, with a little left over to sell. What they’re really interested in is fat. “Our goal was to have some pork and some lard that we can actually use in cooking,” says Derrickson. “Right now our diet has olive oil in it but, hey, there’s no olive trees around here.” It’s almost easier to describe what mulefoot raised on pasture doesn’t taste like than what it does. It has a clean, unadulterated flavor as opposed to that of supermarket pork, whose mealy, mushy texture and oily unsavoriness you don’t notice if it’s all you’ve ever had. Mulefoots have rosy, rich, tender meat, and the quantity and quality of their fat make them good for ham and bacon, something that’s been bred out of the factory-farmed “other white meat.”
Unlike other swine breeds, the mulefoot has solid, not cloven, hooves.
The mulefoot became a recognized standard breed in the early 1900s, when there were some 235 breeders in 22 states. But, as George E. Day reported in his 1913 Productive Swine Husbandry, “The National Mule-foot Hog Record Association, which has its office in Indianapolis, has issued the following statement: ‘Up to the present date, the Mule-foot hog is a hog without an authentic history. Rumors and reports offer Denmark, Holland, South Africa, Mexico, South America, and the Sandwich Islands as the country of his birth. . . . Reports are so contradictory that this Association cannot, without further research, endorse any of them.’” These days the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving rare and endangered livestock and poultry breeds, suspects the mulefoot might be descended from Spanish hogs brought to the New World in the 1500s. By the 1950s, as the mulefoot, along with other distinctive breeds like the tamworth, the red wattle, and the choctaw, was disappearing, replaced by leaner, less flavorful breeds fattened in pens rather than on pasture, a Missouri breeder named R.M. Holliday took up their cause. Nearly a century ago, Holliday’s grandfather began raising mulefoots on islands in the Mississippi River. The Army Corps of Engineers commandeered the land in the 50s and built dams that flooded it, and Holliday’s grandfather went out of business. “More corn on them islands than there was in a lot of the elevators, I expect,” he says. “The government took them all away from them and didn’t give them nothin.’” Holliday himself raised all sorts of swine—Durocs, Spotted Polands, Hampshires, Yorkshires—but in 1961 he began to seek out mulefoot breeding stock. By then they were almost gone, but he found some in Iowa and North Dakota, and there were some in Arkansas too, though “they wasn’t any good hardly,” he says. “Too little. They were roguish little sons of bitches.” As Holliday developed his own line of breeding stock he regularly shipped feeders—as many as 240 a month—off for butchering, where they fetched a 20 percent premium over the going rate. “That was something I never heard of,” says Holliday. “Course I put some fat on. Hogs they’re killing now are poor. They ain’t fit to eat, of any kind.” He says he took some ribbing for raising mulefoots. “Well, I was just foolish enough to keep bothering with them,” he says. “They made all kinds of fun of me. Yeah, some still call me Mr. Mulefoot. That’s the only thing that’s hurt ’em—who wants to eat a mule?” Holliday placed ads for his breeding stock in farm journals, and was just as selective with buyers and breeders he traded with as he was with the stock itself, especially after another breeder’s pigs introduced white feet and wattles into his herd, forcing him to cull them. He had other disputes with breeders over the years. “I always tried to start more breeders but a lot of them wasn’t hog people, they was bums.” Eight years ago Mark Dibert of Tekonsha, Michigan, had no idea the four hogs he’d inherited from his father were among the last of their kind. “My pigs were getting old,” he says. “So I thought, ‘I’ll just get another pig.’ We had the Internet. Shoot, you can find anything on the Internet. But when I got on the Internet there was nothing.” The records of the National Mulefoot Hog Record Association in Indianapolis, the last existing registry for the breed, were destroyed in a fire in the 1970s. Dibert, a retired Michigan state worker who also raises heritage sheep, got a list of three or four breeders from the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, which had been attempting to track down surviving mulefoots since the 70s. But no one had any more pigs. Dibert heard about Holliday and in 2000 he bought some pigs from a breeder in Iowa that were said to have come from Holliday’s herd—but he got rid of them. “When I got them home I didn’t care for them that much,” he says. “I’m not sure they were pure enough. They just didn’t look right as far as what I grew up with and as far as what the breed book standards are.” Dibert and his wife, Jessica, contacted Holliday himself but he wasn’t ready to give any pigs up. “Mr. Holliday didn’t sell to many people,” says Jessica, who’s writing a book on the history of the mulefoot. “He was very, very picky and for many years he sold to nobody.” The Diberts were so alarmed at the breed’s precarious state that in early 2000 they took out ads looking for the owners of the mulefoots Holliday had sold in the early 90s. In 2003 they started the American Mulefoot Hog Association and Registry, putting up a Web page and establishing strict breeding standards taken from a 1954 husbandry textbook. Though some small white points are allowed in the purebred mulefoot’s black, hairy coat, pricked ears and cloven hooves aren’t. And since Holliday had the only known purebreds, the Diberts decided that to be eligible each animal had to be traceable to its herd. At first, the only other pigs they could register were their own.
“We were concerned that if [Holliday] passed they would all be sent to market,” says Jessica. “At this point we knew in order to preserve them you have to have a geographical record of where these purebred pigs ended up.” Holliday himself knew he had to do something with his pigs. “I’m 89 years old, and that’s enough reason to stop everything,” he says. “I’m gonna die, of course.” Three years ago he started selling off small breeding groups. The Diberts picked up two boars and six sows from him, dropping three off with a breeder in Tennessee and integrating the others into their own small herd. They collected pigs in their registry slowly, but after a year they’d logged animals from some 20 different breeders. In February 2006 Holliday sold his entire remaining herd—about 60 hogs—along with his notebooks, correspondence, and old registry records to a South Dakota rancher named Arie McFarlen. McFarlen, who has PhDs in theology and nutrition, runs Maveric Heritage Ranch in Dell Rapids. She and her husband raise a variety of rare breeds—American guinea hogs, Jacob sheep, miniature Sicilian donkeys, and belted Galloway cattle. Eight years ago she was hog shopping. “I wanted to raise a particular breed of pigs that could do well on our production methods,” she says. “Meaning that I didn’t want to confine them. I didn’t want to power feed them. I wanted to be able to turn them loose with the goats and sheep on the pasture and only give them supplements for their feed in the wintertime. And commercial pigs—just no way. You won’t get anything with them. They’ll just be skinny things and they’re not hardy.” She bought some mulefoots from an Iowa family that had Holliday stock and fell in love with the breed.
Last year, after a series of articles about mulefoots appeared in farm publications, the Diberts and McFarlen were swamped by inquiries from homesteaders looking to buy and requests from breeders to register their hogs with uncloven feet. Dibert says he sometimes gets as many as 100 calls a week. But many of these pigs don’t make the cut, having wattles or white feet or some other deviation from the standard. “I have people call me all the time from the southern states and say, ‘Hey, I got mulefoot hogs. What do you want us to do with them?’” says McFarlen. “And I say, ‘Well, what have you been doing with them?’ And they say, ‘Aw, we just shoot them when it’s deer season so we can get the fat for our sausage.’” McFarlen says she replies, “Well, just keep doing that then. I don’t know what else to tell you.” The Diberts figure there are between 250 and 300 pigs in the registry now. It’s likely there are purebreds out there that haven’t been registered yet, and Jessica estimates that at the current rate the registry will grow by a third every year. Despite her promotional efforts, there are a few aspects of the mulefoots’ comeback McFarlen is secretive about. Shortly after she bought Holliday’s herd, she says, she began taking blood samples of all the known purebreds and submitting them to researchers—she won’t say where—for a genetic mapping project. She hopes the research will benefit breeders who want to increase diversity in the breed by determining family lines in the hogs registered with the Diberts. Last spring McFarlen and other breeders gave hair samples to the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, which sent them on to Spain. The University of Cordoba is comparing their DNA to samples from Spanish hogs to determine if the mulefoot is in fact descended from Spanish stock. Normally only livestock that’ll be used for breeding gets registered, but registering all mulefoots helps create a market for their meat, says McFarlen. She says she’s supplied mulefoot meat to restaurants in Colorado, Wisconsin, and New Orleans, though she won’t name them. In 2005 the mulefoot was voted into Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste, the movement’s promotional organ for rare and endangered foods. “We are trying to promote heritage pork and its own independent, exclusive niche,” says McFarlen. “And by getting people to register the whole litter we’re adding traceability to that piece of meat. You can follow it back to where it came from. And by registering the whole litter you’re now validating when someone says, ‘Hey I’m selling purebred heritage mulefoot pork.’ You can go back and see that that pig was in fact registered as part of the litter. You know who his parents were.” Last August Linda Derrickson and Mark Kessenich drove up to McFarlen’s ranch in South Dakota to look at pigs. She cooked them a mulefoot roast, and the couple loaded four young pigs into a truck filled with zucchini and hauled them back to Wisconsin. “That’s a vacation for us,” says Derrickson. “Going and getting pigs in South Dakota.” Crystal, Cong, Cherry, and Churchill bedded down in the barn over the winter. On January 20 Kessenich saw Cong breeding with Crystal, but they weren’t sure she was pregnant, or “with pig,” until her nipples started swelling in the middle of March. The farmer’s rule of thumb says a pig’s gestation period is three months, three weeks, and three days. Mulefoots can farrow (birth) anywhere from two to a dozen piglets. Derrickson figured Crystal would farrow on or about May 15. In mid-April Kessenich moved the pigs to a fenced-off area on the side of a pasture where he and Derrickson will eventually grow squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, corn, and maybe potatoes. The pigs have been eating the quack grass, pulling it up by the roots, along with the occasional earthworm, helping to turn the soil in preparation for planting. Kessenich has been supplementing their diet with a mixture of cracked corn and kitchen scraps, and when he dumps a bucketful into their plastic troughs they emerge from their tin shelter in the middle of the paddock and scarf it down noisily. With Crystal’s graduation from gilt to sow imminent, she and Cherry will soon get their own tin shelters in the paddock, to reduce the chances of an adult rolling over on a piglet. The farmers plan to keep only one piglet for themselves and to sell the rest to people who want them for either their meat or their genes. “If we can register them we can sell them and spread them out a little more,” says Derrickson. As the hogs finish off their kitchen slop the couple’s herd of Scottish Highland cattle appears on a rise above the paddock and slowly makes its way down to the fence. The shaggy blond matriarch of the herd saunters over to the wire fence, and Cong moves to investigate. As the cow lowers her great head to snout level the two animals simultaneously extend and touch tongues briefly through the fence. Derrickson and Kessenich have been struck by how intelligent and curious the mulefoots are. When humans or other animals approach them they get up and follow them around, grunting and squealing conversationally and investigating with their snouts—giving wet “pig kisses.”
“Cong, he is just a terrible flirt,” says Kessenich.
“He’d been here about a week, and Wendy the milk goat hadn’t really come
over and made their acquaintance yet. I’d just taken some summer squash
out to them. We’re standing talking to the pigs and Wendy came over and
put her hooves up on the fence and Cong took one look at her and picked
up this big piece of squash and took it over and handed it to her
through the fence.”
“When we ship animals there’s some uneasiness,” he says.
“But I sit down with every animal that I ship and explain that it is
their relationship with the farm. We give them names and we become very
attached to them. But I’m always straightforward with them. ‘Part of
what you’re doing on this arm is to get big so that you can bring
capital back to the farm.’”
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R.M.
Holliday
