Broken H Farm

Well, it’s happened. The annual Barnyard Terrorists have stuck the farmstead. What are these Terrorists you ask? …. The latest litter of American Guinea Hog piglets that have found their way out of the pasture lot and are roaming the barnyard. They are everywhere! With 8 of them sometimes they move in a gang and sometimes in pairs. When you least expect them, like the dark of pre-dawn, there they are! Where you least expect them, like under the feed bin, they come bursting out to scare you! No fear of the chickens, the horses or the goats. Well, they do give the goats a wide berth because those does aren’t playing around and have no qualms presenting the horns! No bucket is safe, as it had to have something interesting inside, so over it goes. Any feed on the ground is fair game and anything of “interest” will get mauled. Piglets are usually pretty timid and scatter until they figure out humans = food. Seems they made that connection today. I had about 1/2 of them eating bits of chicken out of my hand and nosing around for more. Note to self: those little teeth are sharp and will cut you and a bitten finger tip can really bleed! (Ask me how I know) At the end of the day, I was petting them. Soon they’ll be as friendly as dogs. Next weekend I’ll be locking them up in a stall and starting the real taming down, as 4 will soon be going to new homes. Each night I’ll spend time sitting on a bucket, hand feeding and getting them use to being handled. The days of the barnyard Terrorists are numbered as soon they’ll be too big to slip under the fence and their numbers will be reduced by half. Then the barnyard will know peace again til next year.