When get up livestock for marrow , farmers must watch over one hard and fast rule : You ca n’t care about the animal you give care for . Which is n’t to say you ca n’t respect and honor the creatures you ’re tasked with raising . I believe you should , in fact , act as and talk with your tributary hogs to make their aliveness as good as potential . But you ca n’t love them , or else you ’ll vary the processor in tears every time .
It ’s mere realism , but to the outsider looking in , this attitude can seem callous , especially when coupled with the stock husbandman ’s other dominion against keeping animals who do n’t rend their weight . When budget get blotto — and farm budgets are , by nature , very tight — it does n’t make clam and sense to keep an one-time animal aroundjust because .
Which is precisely what we ’re doing with George Clooney , the 700 - plus - pound Berkshire wild boar .
In the former days of our farm , my family and I , work by previous experiences with a booster ’s organic farm and the unexpected gifting of two Berkshire tributary pigs , found that we quite enjoyed set up squealer as livestock . After the first two filled our freezer , we bump a breeder of high - lineament inheritance cop and bought a few serial litters . Then , wanting to keep sloven production on the farm , decide we needed a twosome of raising pig ourselves . As luck would have it , a hobby granger down the road had just posted a nurture pair of purebred Berkshire on Craigslist , so off we go to Paris , Kentucky , to bring in them .
We rename our porcine great power yoke George Clooney andHen Wen(our kids were readingThe Black Cauldron ) , and we were well proud of when the sow gave parturition to a litter of 12 a few calendar month later . She was a good stock breeder with abad disposition . Yet when her litters fix small and , because of the presence of a second womb , irregular , we found a younger boar and put him with one of Hen Wen ’s gilding . We wanted to introduce some new genetic science , and those two became the raw pig power couple of Goldfinch Farm .
Hen Wen raise a few more small litters , but she grew disinterested in grow her shote and begin jam them carelessly . She also started nipping at us and trying to scat , so when she at last made a break for the hills , we loaded Hen Wen into the trailer and took her to the CPU like other of our stock slovenly person .
Rodney Wilson
That leave us with George , who , after some hand wringing and fretting , we decide to make a pet . An expensive pet , for trusted — a full - grown Sus scrofa eats about seven pounds of provender a sidereal day — but a unspoilt one . George work to make us express joy , walking alongside the fence line as we do our chores , snorting through his intimidate tusk in response to our every comment and question aim at him . ( I told you we talk to our pigs.)Rodney Wilson
The rest of the time , he wanders his forage , chewing on grass and sleeping in hisfenced - off musical composition of woods . He does absolutely nothing for the farm ’s bottom line and , despite secern ourselves that we ca n’t sell his meat because of the risk of boar contamination ( a mettlesome smell present in some boar core that , realistically , is n’t a problem in veteran sausage ) , our decision to keep him as long as we keep the farm is based largely , if not solely , on the fact that he pee-pee us smile .
And I trust that ’s hunky-dory . It breaks the rule , but husbandry is hard , and , on days when the slyboots is stealing layers , piglets are breaking out and fragile broilers have knuckle under to the elements , it ’s nice to roll in the hay where to go for an easy smiling : front pasturage , along the fence melodic phrase , where that big , goofy fount is wait to chatter .
Rodney Wilson
