More Farm Barter Fun (and a pig ends up in a tupperware)

What is it that you are looking at in this photo?

Why two grown men trying to duct tape a piglet inside a plastic tote of course! 

Isn't that what everyone was doing on this fine Tuesday afternoon?

A pig I had just traded them for the veterinary service of making sure a mare's uterus was empty.

Today was the day I had scheduled for Dr. Ben (who did such a great job on the horses' teeth a few weeks ago) to come and check Lilly's reproductive parts out and make sure that her weird spring of no baby + weird milk and no estrus was not, in fact, the result of a cyst, tumor, etc. Something I should have done many months ago but have basically been too afraid to do so lest the news be bad.

In addition, since we had an ultrasound unit at the farm, I also scheduled them to pregnancy check a certain wee pony with a giant belly. There was a chance that little miss Mimi could have been pregnant before showing up as a stray at my aunt's farm last summer and we didn't want to take any chances with a possible baby in the horrors of a cold South Dakota winter.

And so Lilly got "armed" as the term goes. Mimi was luckier and got ultrasounded from the OUTSIDE (if you aren't familiar with large animal repro, go look it up, I'll refrain from an in-depth description of how we check things so as to not freak the city folk out).

Dr. Ben and his assistant were cleaning up when he informed me that since he had last seen me a few weeks ago, he had acquired a pig. It was in transit from the farrowing barn to the growing barn of a large confinement facility and got stuck behind a gate in the trailer and forgot. It somehow then ended up with Dr. Ben and he took it home to his wife. But now they had one pig living in a box stall in their barn with no companion.

I informed him I had just the solution!

Polly, the little white piglet we got earlier this summer, had fallen pretty far behind the rest after she had been sick in September. Then being the smallest, she got less overall feed and kept getting smaller until our current state where she was maybe 1/4 the size of the rest. I had been trying to figure out an effective management solution to make sure she got the extra feed she needed to catch up. But that meant separating her out and I hated to use up more barn space.

And so we made a trade....Dr. Ben and his family got a companion for their new pig and I got a free ultrasound. I love the barter system--everyone wins!

But Dr. Ben still needed to get home to Nebraska.

He didn't have much room in his pickup and so putting her in the big dog kennel wasn't the answer. Polly is pretty petite, maybe 30-35lbs, and so we walked around the barn trying to find a suitable transportation solution. They didn't have far to go to get home but she had to be contained while they drove. Pigs don't exactly ride quietly on the back seat.

That's when I spotted the Rubbermaid tote I had just removed all my water tank heaters from. Not ideal, but more than big enough and after we punched a few holes in it, pretty similar to dog kennel really...well kind of...oh hell, close enough.

Polly was surprisingly cooperative about going in but not for long---as we put the lid down, BOOM, she hit it and was ready to jump out. She was soon shaking, rattling and rolling that tote with all three of us trying to hold the lid down. We knew we had to secure that lid well or Dr. Ben would have a wild, careening piglet in the cab of his truck somewhere between here and the Missouri River!

As always, duct tape is the solution for everything. We tipped that tote sideways and wrapped that duct tape around it like a mummy. By the time we had a whole roll on there, Polly wasn't going to easily pop out again.

That was a few hours ago and I hope Dr. Ben and Polly made it home safe and not with the interior of his pickup covered in hog excrement. Something tells me that my bill might go up if that is the case!

Oh and the results of Mimi and Lilly. I happy to say that both of them have fine, healthy and most importantly, EMPTY uterusses (or is it uteri, I really don't know how to make that word plural!). No babies, no tumors, no aliens!