While these events were taking place in the pig world, another drama was unfolding on my farm, and perhaps I need to set the scene for this part of the story.  Of the many dairy goats I bred in the nineties, I had only three left - Motu, the buck, and two does, Dawn and Rheema - and I had problems with them escaping from my place and going into the forest on the hill above us.  Thanks to the hot, dry weather, a post on my back fence-line had eased and they could squeeze under the wires. I didn't approve of this arrangement, but with my mother's illness over the past few years, the niceties of fence maintenance hadn't been uppermost in my mind.

My remaining buck – Motu - is different from any I've ever had.  He is a Toggenburg / Nubian cross of my own breeding. His coat is tan, with black long boots and a black stripe along his backline.  He has a fairly long, sweeping pair of horns, never having be dehorned as a youngster like all my others, and they seem to be getting longer by the day.  Actually he's a fine-looking animal with a top-class pedigree, a good solid body and all the maverick qualities of the Toggenburg breed.  He has a mop of beautiful cream curls on his brow that hang down over his eyes, so you can never see where he is looking, and you never know what he is thinking.  He is a highwayman.  When he was younger I used to wrestle him to get drench down his throat, but I'm wiser than to do that these days.   I did not hand-rear him, and he is not tame.

I have had one or two episodes with him, at times when he thought he was being cornered.  The first occurred in my big shed when he happened to be in an open corner pen area and without a second thought I went to go in there.  He simply put his head down and charged me full bore in the stomach, much to my surprise, sweeping me backwards about 5 feet down a short narrow alley between the rails.  Fortunately, I braced myself on the fence and kept my balance, and was able to slide sideways and let him past when we reached the end of the fence.  It was a huge shock, and would probably have looked quite amusing, had anyone been there to see it happen.

Stupidly, I approached him again with some feed in a big plastic fish-bin.  He took to me a second time.  I rammed the bin at him and he cracked it.  The problem was, over the years I’ve been so accustomed to having hand-reared bucks that are basically “tame” that it took me a couple of lessons to realise he definitely is NOT!

One day in 2006 at a time when they were out wandering, I came home from shopping to find that Motu and Dawn had come down from the hill and were in my drive close to a set of double steel gates that I normally keep closed. “Aha,” I thought, “here we go.”

I drove through the gates and called them – and they followed me. Dawn is great: she will come, hoping for food, and where the female goes the male will follow. (Don't we all know that?) So I hopped out of the Ute and walked round to get the gates closed.  I forgot that my young black labrador / ridgeback cross was running loose.

Grabbing one of the gates, I stepped across the drive to reach for the other one and close them.  The buck had turned to watch me.  Suddenly - it may be that the dog spooked him from behind, or maybe he thought he was being trapped again - he launched himself into the air down the slight slope and came literally flying towards me at head height.  If the gate had been there, he would have cleared it, but I instinctively let go of it and it swung away from me – thank goodness.

All this happened in a flash.  I saw his head come down as he began to descend, and he struck me across my right upper arm, left thigh and hip, spinning me round and throwing me down on my left hand in the driveway.  When I sat up, he was standing about 25 feet away, looking at me from under his curls. I had bruises for days, but I guess I was lucky that was all I had.  You don't come off scott-free from an encounter with an airborne billy goat.

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The other hilarious episode - though it didn't feel hilarious at the time - happened on the first night Natasha was here with her piggies.  I had spent a great deal of time beforehand trying to ensure the piglets would not be able to get to Boris's adjacent pen or anywhere else where they might come to harm. They were only about 8 weeks old.

The wooden gate leading out of the back garden to the shed area has a short run of rail fence alongside it with Boris's steel gate on one side and, on the other, a steel gate into a paddock where I often put Murphy.  I laid a fencepost under this wooden gate so the little piggies couldn't slide under and there was some deformed steel square mesh under the short run of fence alongside the gate itself. So the piglets would be well contained -  I hoped.  I had rigged up all kinds of netting wonders further down to make the rest of Borus's fence as secure as I could.

Late in the evening I fed Natasha and the piglets down by the house.  Then I went up the top to feed Boris and Murphy, taking a roundabout route as I didn't want to advertise to Natasha and Co what I was up to.  I need not have gone to the trouble - they just followed their noses and arrived regardless, as soon as I had put out the feed for the other two.

I was out there filling water troughs in the gathering dusk when - horror of horrors - suddenly a little piglet popped out from under the fence, like chewing gum out of a wrapper, and dived under the steel gate to try and grab some of the food Murphy was dropping as he ate. When I got closer I saw they were also trying to get through my 8 wire fence along the side, but that seemed to be withstanding the assault.  I nearly had a fit because just that afternoon my neighbour's wife had helpfully said to me "Mind your horse doesn't stand on the piglets."  Murphy being what he is, I paid attention.

Rushing forward, I opened the gate, scooped up the piglet and put him back with mom.  Seconds later another one (or the same one?) popped out and headed for Murphy again.  As fast as I grabbed them and threw them back in they kept popping out.  EEEk!  I had visions of my little piggies being stomped on by Murphy's big feet or ground up in Boris's gnashers - because they could have walked under his gate, too.

Over by the small sheds I have a stack of No1 fenceposts and I rushed over to grab one and put it under Murphy's gate.  Then back to get two more, to put under Boris's gate.  These posts are heavy, and there I was in the fast gathering darkness romping around lugging fenceposts and lengths of timber to try and stop these naughty little piggies from getting where they shouldn't be. They were making it out through the deformed steel squares. Though I'd thought they would be too big, they were still able to wriggle out, so that had to be blocked as well.

You could have heard me a mile off cursing the fact that dramas always seem to happen last thing at night when you're dead tired and can't see.  Finally, the holes all seemed to be blocked and the excitement died down.  I went up to check with a torch later.  Natasha had made herself a nest in the litter under the trees close to Boris's fence and she was curled up peacefully with the piggies sound asleep between her legs.

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I should perhaps go back to the day when Boris first arrived. 

I have a middle-aged grey gelding called Murphy.  I've had him about four years I guess - he came "free to a good home" from a pony club.  I found out he had a history of bucking, just too late to stop him being dropped off in the race at my gate. But when I saw him there, there was something about him that drew me.

He's a handsome horse with bags of character, some Arab blood, and he's nobody's fool.  I like him a lot, though he can be a bit stroppy, and right now I don't have time to work on that.   I have ridden him once and before I start riding him seriously (whenever I get time again), we shall both have to be worked on by experts.  Murphy has had no equine companionship for the last couple of years, and I feel for him on that score.  But - let's face it - things are hotting up around here and there's never a dull moment, so he can't complain of lack of entertainment.

Boris arrived pretty late one evening in a very swept-up horsefloat.  By the time we offloaded him and walked him up to his pen behind the shed, Murphy - who obviously had heard the horsefloat coming and was anticipating the arrival of the equine equivalent of a well-endowed blonde - was down at the fence waiting.  I don't think Murphy had ever seen a pig before - certainly not a fat, exotic, black and cream one with a flowing coat like Boris.

It was getting dark and all our attention was taken up with getting Boris settled.  When I went up to check on things the following morning, Murphy was nowhere around.  I finally spied him standing in the upper paddock right back against the bushline, as far away from the new arrival as he could possibly get.  "Yikes Mother - what's that????"

I called him down and he came into the lower paddock but resisted coming down to the gate, prancing around on the edge of an invisible circle about 30 feet radius from the gate itself.  When I finally got him through it - at top speed - he took up a position round the corner out of sight of the pig, and just stood there most of the day, not even particularly interested in his feed bowl.  The pig had put him well and truly "off his tucker", because normally I have to really assert myself to make him stand back while I get his feed put out.

The next day looked like being a repeat performance so I knew I had to spend a bit of time.  I put Murphy on a lead and led him up to the pig's gate.  He was too spooky to want to even look, but I made him look and kept him there.  Boris is basically a friendly soul, and he came up to the gate and carried on a long chatter, putting his face up to the horse.  Murphy with his ears bolt-forward gradually bent his neck and before too long the two were talking.

The relationship hasn't been without incident. I fed them together after that - Boris inside his run and Murphy outside - always feeding Murphy first.  I finally decided to let them out together into the paddock - worrying more for Murphy than for Boris, actually.  How wrong I was.  When I went up to check them later, Murphy had bitten Boris on his back and drawn a little blood.  Out came the stock iodine, and it's all healed up now.  It's good that I am getting a few more other animals around again - Murph is going to have to learn to behave.

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Not that I wasn't warned.  Just the week before getting the little piggies I'd been reading the first of a series of articles by a lifestyler journalist in one of our farming papers, entitled "The Great Pig Learning Curve". (YEA!)  The writer had bought a couple of Kunekune piglets for his wife.  As soon as they were let out, the piglets took off across his paddock, under the gate, up the drive, over the road, under the neighbour's fence and into a piece of swamp, where the neighbour managed to catch them with a rugby tackle.  One can imagine the mess.  History repeats itself, moreover.

Come to think of it, I have a couple more stories to tell....

The day I went south for the camera, I took with me Ashley, the young commercial pig breeder who gave me Boris.  He wanted to look at some Kunekunes for sale over towards Dargaville and I was keen to look too.  Ashley ended up buying a white sow piglet and four young 12 month old black sows. We duly loaded them into the back of my Utility for the journey home.

I have to say my Ute is unique in the world.  It's an old Subaru with a canopy on the back and instead of a rear tailgate - which rusted out in the days when I used to take goats to shows - it has a strong steel grille that I bought second-hand because it looked kinda useful, before I even realised it would be such a perfect fit on the vehicle.  The grille slips down between the moulding of the body, and the bottom of it traps nicely into the slot between the body and the back bumper-bar.  It has stood the test of time with goats and dogs - in fact my dogs travel with it every time I go out and it provides them with great ventilation.

It was a hot, sunny day and we were cruising along the Dargaville-Whangarei highway on our way home when Ashley, who luckily was keeping an eye on happenings in the back, suddenly yelled out "The grille's gone!"

There was traffic not far behind us.   With visions of piggies spilling out onto the road like black Jellybeans out of a packet, I planted foot and pulled off to the side as quick as I could.  Ashley leapt out of the nearside door and rushed to the back.  What the drivers of the cars behind thought, heaven only knows.  Fortunately, the piggies were still inside.

Ashley yelled out - "You stay here - I'll go!"  "No you stay!" I answered.  One thing I was sure of - ANYTHING was preferable to trying to hold back 5 curious young sows in a four foot wide-open gateway.  And I didn't want to be the one responsible for losing his investment.  So Ashley crouched down, arms spread out to keep the pigs from leaping off and disappearing into the pig-fern (where else?).  I took off hot-foot back down the roadside to find the grille.  Again, the passing traffic was probably highly amused.

There it was lying a hundred yards back.  Once we got it fitted back in, I looked round for something to tie it down with.  It's a big mistake to clean out a farm vehicle - all those useful odds and ends like baling twine, bent nails and paper wrappers had only that morning fallen prey to my "clean-up to visit the big city" mania, and now I badly needed that baling twine... 

We had to make do with a dog lead and one of Ashley's shoe-laces - not exactly ideal, but we hadn't too many choices.  Climbing back on board, we speculated as to how on earth the grille could ever have come out, trying to remember who had actually put it in place before we left.  I couldn't understand it.  Then it dawned on both of us:  the pigs had simply stuck their noses out through the steel mesh and heaved the grill up, using the great power they have in their necks and shoulders  (a bit like Natasha with my netting fences).  Not quite as easy as it sounds though - I sometimes struggle to get that grille in and out: you have to get it "just right" or it won't co-operate. 

But it was no problem for the piggies.   "The Great Pig Learning Curve"? You're not joking!

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After our little escapade (and the inevitable veterinary bill), the piglets were "confined to barracks" again in the shed for a couple of days while I made quite sure the kitchen garden was escape-proof.  That was easier and quicker than fixing the back-garden fence, which was going to require posts and rails to prevent Ben from breaching it a second time.

There was one sneaky little corner in the kitchen garden, that lacked the timber bottom-plate my father had put in as part of the rabbit-proofing.  I fastened some netting into that, with a few rocks for good measure, and decided we were ready to roll.  I carried the squealing piggies down from the shed one at a time and liberated them into their new home, adding some feed into the feeders I'd provided.  They had quite a nice big area, under trees on one side, with grass and fern to eat and hide in, and their little tin kennel.

Over the next couple of days I began to feel that things were improving.  After being shut in the shed for awhile, Honey and Nutmeg had come to realise that I was the main source of food.  That's the key ingredient in acclimatising any new stock, so I began to feel more confident.  Whenever I left the house and walked towards them, four comical little grunters came rushing across to their fence - looking like mobile ginger teddy-bears.

My peace of mind was short-lived.  The following day as I came walking back from our farm gate, I was met on our drive by Honey - unerringly in search of the Food Supply.  Of all the piglets Honey has the greatest love of food - and with pigs, that's saying something.  Big panic - if she was out, where were the rest?

In with Boris as it turned out.  All along, I'd been scared of the piglets getting in with Boris.  Since he wasn't their father and he's about 4 years and quite a big pig complete with tusks, I was afraid he'd harm them. Viewed from the front when he opens his mouth, those slashers are not to be trifled with. I am always careful around him however laid-back he might be.

I knew that once farrowing and the first few days are over it's safe to let the Kunekune boar run with mom and the piggies, whereas the boars of other pig breeds will kill even their own piglets if they are with them.  But since Boris wasn't the sire of Natasha's brood, I was cautious and tried to keep them out of his way - until Natasha took things into her own hands and blatted through his fence.  At that point I found he didn't harm them, which was a great relief, and a tribute to the Kunekune breed.

Back to square one in the shed again, the piggies cooled their heels while I did a tour of the kitchen garden and found they had burrowed out in my "trouble spot" - in one tiny corner right down behind a tree trunk where the netting had nothing to hold it down.  Didn't my farming neighbour say, "If they can get their noses through, the rest of them will follow?"  My respect for the intelligence of these pigs was growing by the minute, as I squeezed myself, my hammer, and assorted bits of timber, hardware and wire in between the fence-post and the treetrunk to repair the damage.  Why is it that these things always occur in some inaccessible spot where it's practically impossible to swing a hammer and hold a nail or staple?  Hmm...  I finally retired with a bruised thumb, netting (hopefully) held secure, and tossed in a few more rocks by way of insurance....

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