As I clean out our recently acquired stock trailer used to transport our three pigs to their final destination, I reflect on the last five months. It has been a journey of mixed emotions. We expected to feel some guilt as our relationship with these pigs came to an end. We didn’t really sleep the night before, as we focused on the logistics of moving them. We got up at 4.30am and the pigs were good as gold loading into the trailer we had introduced into the corral a few days earlier.
The corral had been started months earlier but only finished when we moved the trailer in. The pigs had surprised us by wandering into the trailer without any encouragement, no straw, no mat, no food. Just plain curiosity and the pangs of guilt began. We had had a false start a few weeks ago when their appointment at the abattoir had been cancelled the night before. It seemed incredibly lucky to get a slot before Christmas for first timers and it turned out to be too good to be true. In hindsight, it gave us a chance to plan better and purchase the right trailer for the job.
Originally we had planned to use the horse box we purchased with the farm but this turned out to be wrong for several reasons. Firstly, it was heavy and we failed to reverse it into the corral as the ground was wet and muddy. Secondly, it was made of wood and we thought the pigs may eat their way out of it. Given that they managed to eat the bottom foot of chipboard in the stable we moved them into the night before we were probably not wrong. So when the move was cancelled, we sold the horse box on Facebook and bought a 7ft by 4ft 6 galvanised stock trailer with a roof that opened and stock loading hurdles. It has served us well already, moving 12 bales of hay and straw on the first day, then moving a five month old highland steer the second week and finally moving our pigs to the abattoir.
It is safe to say that we expected taking the pigs to slaughter to be difficult but we were so focused on the loading, transport and unloading that it was only afterwards we felt strange. Our pigs unloaded from the trailer into the waiting bays easily, I called them, “Come on piggies” and lead them into the waiting area. We caught sight of others pigs waiting, they looked small and scared. Our pigs were confident and much bigger. That image will stay with me for some time.
I can hear some people questioning, how do we justify our actions. The bottom line is we know these pigs have had a good life. They were born 4 miles from our farm, they had a short journey to us, a great outdoor life with a good diet supplemented by fresh vegetables and fruits and a short 3-4 mile journey to the end. In meat producing terms, it couldn’t be a better life unless they met their end on the farm they were born on and modern animal welfare legislation makes that difficult. For now we are content with growing weaners from our good friends here and giving them the best we can. In the future their area may be extended to include our bottom wood, but in the meantime we will be planting root vegetables for our next weaners to dig up and looking forward to good home reared pork.
