Two before breakfast

I awoke this fine sunny morning to discover a huge nest in Jamie Lee’s Bidgiemire insulated pig ark http://www.pig-arcs.co.uk/ which was a bit of a surprise because it was not there at midnight when I last checked on her! I also found one piglet suckling and another lost in the corner of the ark.

Fuzzy piglet

Which when you see the amount of rushes that she’d used, it was hardly surprising that one had got lost and I know the picture’s a bit fuzzy but I was shaking with excitement

Fresh piglet!

The swineherd relieved me for 10 mins whilst I had some breakfast then she went on the school run and I sat in with her for the next couple of hours, watching her fire them out like wee sausages. Once out I gave  them a wipe then lifted them over the mountain of rushes and popped them onto a teat.

8 slimy piglets

Pretty soon there were 8 wet and slimy piglets all scrabling for a place at the bar amidst a tangle of umbilical cords.

8 clean curly tails

and now I must go and crawl back under a Nissan Primera with an angle grinder and MIG welder!

Who says pigs are dirty?

Well that’s the welding finished and now I’m up on the roof finishing the painting that I started in May before I was hit by a bout of the ‘un swine flu’. Having first gone to check on the wee darlings and been stunned to find some of them out of their house already which at only 7 hours old is a record for us.

Very bold @ 7 hours old!

But what really surprised me was when I discovered they were already ‘house trained’!

:-)

And now I’m off back up the roof!

An early night

Well I finally got the the old tin roof finished in its ‘Farm oxide green’ and I even took the ladders down that seem to have been resting on the roof for months. I do the roof every couple of years and have tried many different methods from a plain 5″ paint brush to a 12″ broom and by far the best method was a 9″ wavy shaped roller that had the same contours as the corrugated iron. Unfortunately the company that makes them has discontinued them so I used the paint brush, the broom is quicker but messier and uses more paint so it’s more suited to painting the sheds and barn with cheaper bitumous paint than the house and its shiny green.

Finished at last

And that’s it really, it’s 21:30 I’m going to have a long soak to remove the melted underseal off the Nissan, the pig related doo doo and the green paint from the roof then I’m off to bed!

I could not resist

Though I could not help but stick another piglet picture in before I go