A sick pig

I went down to the barn Saturday morning to feed and water the pigs and noticed right away that Lunch wasn't interested in eating. Normally both of the pigs are crowding me as soon as I walk in the corral, looking for their food and a scratch behind the ears, but Lunch was still laying down in the barn. I tried offering her a pail of milk and when she wasn't even interested in that I started to worry. Saturday was a really hot day, so I hoped it was just the sudden heat wave that was making her listless. I made a big mud wallow in the back corner of the barn where it is always cooler and sprayed both pigs down with the hose every couple of hours. I also bought a vitamin and electrolyte mix to add to their water, basically Gatorade for pigs, and by 2 in the afternoon she was eating and walking around, by nightfall she appeared to have made a full recovery and has been fine since. That was a huge relief.

The birds are still doing fine, the ducks just keep getting bigger and bigger, I expect some of them to be at the 3 pound mark this week, and the mess they make has grown right along with them. It doesn't help that they appear to have no interest in being outdoors at all, even though they are free to move out into an enclosed pen at any time. The turkeys, in contrast, spend most of their time outside. I have the turkeys trained to come inside or outside at my whistle, another point against their supposed brainlessness. Yesterday was flight training day for the turkeys as they took turns making test flights, some of them about 12' long, up and down one of the enclosures.

The garden is still thriving, we had some friends over for dinner on Saturday evening and I forced them to take radishes home with them, I think we pulled just over 2 dozen giant radishes out of the ground that day.