Pigs like mud right?

Well if that’s the case, then they should be happy……….well, happy as a pig in……………………………………….mud…

This summer has produced some spectacular mud…

So much mud…

Both pig pens seem to be teeming in their own, never-ending supply of mud-pie, gloopy, muddy sludge.

As far as I can tell, the piggies like the mud, but it makes feeding and watering them difficult.

They have a propensity for standing in their water troughs and feed troughs.

No manners………………..no manners whatsoever.

I’ve tried to affix their dishes to the sides of their pen walls, but they still tear them down and stand in them……………and do other things in them too…

Yuck.

And with their self-produced mud puddles, any feeding dish/pan/bowl/or trough ultimately becomes submerged and disappears under the muddiness.

Feeding the piggly-darlings has become challenging.

My trusty spousal-unit (Paolo) and I put our heads together and designed a tea-party-type table for the pigs.

In dry season, putting their food on the ground was an option.  But with all of this rain and their resulting mud, that just doesn’t work…………….their food sinks…………….they are really eating mud-pies.

Paolo and I scrounged for scrap lumber (easy to find here).  We cut down some old, decayed fence posts, trimmed some plywood to 4′ x 4′, and edged the plywood with additional scrap wood.

It wouldn’t qualify as Thomas Chippendale furniture.  But………it’ll do.

We used hay-bale strings tied together so that we could stand on either side of the sty and lower the “table” into their pen without going in ourselves.

Their pleasant nature is only to be trusted as long as there is a welded-metal  panel between their tusks and our body parts.

We got the table set up in the corner of their pen, but the legs were longer than we wanted. ………..it was too tall for the pigs to reach.

What to do…………………what to do………………….our exacting carpentry work could not go to waste……………..what to do……………….what to do…

So with a great deal of stubbornness and a little less common sense, we set up a ladder on the outside of the pig’s panel, right by where the table was.

I was self-nominated to go up the ladder and over the panel to stand on the table and use my weight (hey, I’m reducing) to push the table deeper into the mud so that the pigs would be able to reach the top for their future meals (BUT, not me as a future meal).

I have to say, for an old broad I can be fairly quick and surprisingly nimble when the need arises.

Scampering was necessary in this situation…………………..so scamper I did……

I scaled the ladder, swung over the fence-panel.  Paolo stood guard to tell me if the piggies were eyeing my legs/feet/ or my piggies, and I used my body weight for positive-purposes to sink the table deeper into the mud.

Easy Peezy…….

I almost made a flawless escape.  With the exception of getting hung-up when Patrice (my bib over-alls) on the sharp wire at the top of the panels, while Paolo stabilized the ladder for me on the outside of the sty’s wall.

And I made it with all my limbs and soft-bits intact.       Phew!

………………well except for the contused & scraped-up cellulite on the back of my knees where Patrice & I got stuck on the pokie-cut-metal-pieces.

**********Conclusion:  Mission “Pig-Meal” was  a Success**********

The three (less than little) piggies have a re-decorated sty.

Their new table works for them.

They will still eat pig slop………………….but at least they will be eating pig slop off of their new table.

Pigs with etiquette~~~~~~~~~~always a good thing.

 

 

Next, we will teach them the difference between a regular fork and a fish fork.

 

 

(to be continued……….)