And I think today would qualify..........!!!! You will notice this is NOT a donkey. This is Fred the pig. A few days ago a friend & I went to see him. He was so crippled up, we made the decision to euthanize him, rather than put him thru moving, castration, tusk trimming, feet trimming & anything else we could think to do to the poor guy. We talked to his caretakers & they wanted him shot, rather than using a Vet. We found someone willing to do it & today was to be the day. We also were going to move the 3 sheep this morning. When John & I went down to get the sheep, Fred was moving around pretty good. We wrangled sheep for about an hour. Talk about suspicious......... John finally managed to rope each one. Pretty good considering he isn't even close to being able to use a rope effectively. In the process Fred was moving around trying to stay out of the battle. So we decided to give him a chance. Wrangling a pig isn't the same as wrangling a sheep. At one time we managed to get him all the way to the trailer. John tried to pick him up, & you never heard such a sound in your life, he sounded like we were killing him. Then he would only back up. We finally decided to put him back in the pen & try later. By this time he was NOT going to cooperate with us for any reason. It is almost impossible to move a large pot bellied pig if he doesn't want to move. He spraddled his legs & laid on the ground . John finally pulled on the front, while I pull the bristles on his tush, which would make him pull away from me, & move a few inches forward. It took a LONG time to get back to the pen. Too bad someone wasn't standing by with a camera, even we were laughing.
We brought the sheep home & Sugar's new Mom & Dad were waiting for us. We left the sheep in the trailer, loaded Sugar up & said our good-byes. She was sticking her nose over the top of the trailer as they left, like she didn't want to leave. It's worse than sending your child to the 1st day of school, even though we know she will have a wonderful home. Georgette called after they got home, & said she made the trip just fine, & already has poor Jacque & the horses terrorized, they don't know what to think about this new "thing" in their lives.
Speaking of terrorized, try dropping 3 sheep in the middle of a bunch of horses, mules & donkeys. I don't who is more terrorized, the equines or the poor sheep. Not to mention the sheep have to contend with the dogs sharing a fence with them. Nikki seems to think it's jolly good fun to lunge at the fence & watch them scurry to the other side.
One of the neighbor's showed up, he looked strong enough to be of some assistance for our pig problem, so we told him how much fun it was going to be. Silly man, agreed to help. We were gathering ropes & anything else that might help with this process, when Joe, who was to be the executioner showed up. Joe's a big guy & his grandparents had a farm with pigs & other assorted large animals. Yippee! As you can tell from the picture, Joe is walking Fred without our incompetent assistance, with a rope around his rather rotund neck & using his tail as a "joy stick". Got him to the trailer in record time, picked him up & plopped him in. That's better than what John had planned. He was going to take the tractor down & scoop poor Fred up in the bucket & drive home, not a long distance, but might be interesting, with a pig in the bucket, trying to get out. John's theory was..........the bucket would be too slick for him to get any traction..........!!!!! Boy am I glad Joe showed up...........!!!!
He's still in the trailer. John built him a little house out of hay bales, & it's really quite comfortable, I would think. We'll keep him there for a few days until we figure out what we want to do next, since we hadn't planned on having a pot bellied pig here.
A few weeks ago I loaned a donkey book to some neighbors that live north of us. They adopted a BLM jenny which of course was pregnant & wanted to learn as much as they could about "birthing" a donkey baby. They came by this afternoon, with a picture of their little 5 day old girl. She looks like a little fuzzy toy. They said she is very friendly & the Mom doesn't seem to mind them interacting with the baby. Mom also did the dirty deed while they were sleeping, they came out in the morning & had 2 donkeys instead of 1. They are going to have so much fun spoiling that little girl I bet.
Sunday we will move the roosters to a home down by Elfrieda. A woman down there has free ranging chickens & offered to give the roosters a home, which is great. I was afraid we would never find anyone to take them. Of course we will be looking for homes for the sheep. And we don't know what will happen with Fred long term, we'll try to get some weight off him, & maybe build up his strength. Actually he seems to be strong enough, but prefers to sit around rather than walk around.
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