A week has passed & still the piglets are not weaned, the goats have not had their hooves clipped, their yard cleaned, nor been vaccinated or drenched. The weather has been quite atrocious. I paced around until nearly midnight last night listening to the rain hammering on the roof of the house and the wind howling through the decks. It’s bitterly cold & there is no let up in the weather this morning. I haven’t checked the rain gauge yet, but it looks like over 50mm in 24 hours. The tops of Sleeping Beauty & Mount Wellington (when not shrouded in cloud & rain) are streaked with snow. Suddenly they seem very wild and remote. The creeks are raging & new rivers flow across paddocks.
The animals are extraordinary hardy. I can see the goat bucks out now foraging for food & nibbling at the bale of hay – now soaking – I put out for them yesterday. Vicky & the piglets are also out & about & wondering when someone is going to come & feed them. I had planned (once again) to tackle piglet-weaning today, but even I’m not masochistic enough to stumble around ankle-deep in mud with icy, horizontal rain driving into my face. I have at least prepared the weaning pen. The last two small goats have been moved out & indeed sold a couple of days later (as pets to a couple guaranteed to dote upon them). I’ve cleared out the straw & goat manure from around the goat feeding station, filling 30 feed bags in the process. There is no vehicle access & a wheelbarrow was awkward, so this seemed the only solution, but it was a back-breaking job. The only thing left to do is set up a pig-proof water container (I might set the one that’s there into the ground).
Other things occupying me include the probable imminent closure of our local abbatoir. This would be a disaster. It is the only abbatoir for hundreds of miles that kills goats & also takes individual pigs from smallholders & hobby farmers like myself. If it does not get sold, it may spell the end of my goat meat enterprise. I’ve met with the agent & talked to the sellers & am putting out feelers with respect to getting together a consortium, should a single buyer not emerge. We have until the end of June. Just from the point of view of animal welfare, a local abbatoir is a must – it minimises the time for which animals must be transported. Talking of which there is currently a big brouhaha here over live exports – an ABC documentary program revealed the hardship & cruelty that cattle endure when shipped to Indonesia for slaughter (although I’ve no doubt that similar conditions prevail in other countries). It comes as no surprise really: live exports are an abomination. Animals should be killed as close as possible to their home farm I believe, without being stressed by long journeys & hours spent in cramped holding pens. The terror & pain of the animals at the slaughterhouse is just the final end to their long trial.
