Girl, girl, girl...BOY!!!

See if you can work out what's going on with this picture.

On November 5th Daisy gave birth to 11 spotty piglets. I eventually managed to count 7 girls and 4 boys - a bit of a result. So far I've sold the 4 boys and one of the girls, until today when a couple of new pig keepers turned up to collect their two girls.

These piglets are the friendliest I have ever raised, maybe because they've been bought up in the stables and get more human contact. So catching them is not too much of a problem. Just put down a handful of food to stop them nibbling my wellies then grab the desired piglet by the back legs and carry to the waiting car. They squeal loudly at first, as their feet leave the ground, and wriggle a bit - they are surprisingly strong, even at this age - but this is the best way to pick them up and they soon settle down in the back of the car.

After sorting out the relevant paperwork (all on-line now) we headed off to the stable and it wasn't long before I had the first piglet dangling by the back legs.
But boy was I in for a surprise. For I was holding a boy!!

I don't know how this happened.
All I can think is that they did keep moving about a lot when I originally counted them. Since then, without marking them, it's not been possible to get them all in a line, facing the right way to easily tell boys from girls.

Anyway, I now have three girls and a boy left. Not a disaster.

These ones get to stay at Swallow Farm.

To celebrate the successful completion of Operation Shiftapig, we ate our first ever duck eggs (yes,that's plural as there was another one waiting for us this morning).

And delicious they were too!