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    The Virgin Pig Keeper: A Pair of Pigs in the Garden
    The Virgin Pig Keeper: A Pair of Pigs in the Garden
    The Virgin Pig Keeper: A Pair of Pigs in the Garden
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    The Virgin Pig Keeper: A Pair of Pigs in the Garden

    By David Brown

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Rearing your own two pigs in the garden has so many plus points that it is extraordinary that the Government hasn’t made it compulsory. The result of your efforts is succulent pork and with a little application real bacon and sausages of an unbelievable excellence the like of which you have never tasted before. In this rearing process you also have the benefit of alert, continually fascinating and socially lively companions, renowned for reducing stress.

    Remember P.G. Wodehouse’s pig, the Empress of Blandings. Churchill summed it up. ’Cats‘, he said, ‘look down on you, dogs look up to you, but pigs look you straight in the eye like an equal.’

    To help you accomplish the above happy outcome this book will get you streetwise in pig husbandry. It will show you how to drive a pig from A to B - not many people know that - also where to scratch them to give the most pleasure. Unlike most textbooks it not only tells you what to do but how. Finally if you lose concentration it has drawings to delight the eye by an artist who has actually worked with pigs.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWhittet Books
    Release dateSep 12, 2011
    ISBN9780905483016
    The Virgin Pig Keeper: A Pair of Pigs in the Garden
    Author

    David Brown

    David Brown is the host of the hit podcasts Business Wars and Business Wars Daily. He is also the co-creator and host of Texas Standard, the Lone Star’s statewide daily news show, and was the former anchor of the Peabody award-winning public radio business program Marketplace. He has been a public radio journalist for more than three decades, winning multiple awards, and is a contributor to All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and other NPR programs. Brown earned his PhD in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and his Juris Doctor from Washington and Lee University School of Law. He lives with his wife and two children in Austin, Texas.

    Read more from David Brown

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      Book preview

      The Virgin Pig Keeper - David Brown

      The Virgin Pig Keeper

      A Pair of Pigs in the Garden

      David Brown FLS

      Illustrations by Eric Copeland

      Whittet Books Ltd

      1 St John’s Lane

      Stansted

      Essex CM24 8JU

      email: mail@whittetbooks.com

      First published 2010

      Text copyright David Brown 2010

      Illustrations copyright Eric Copland 1992, 2009

      Smashwords edition 2011

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of Whittet Books Ltd.

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. That you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      The rights of David Brown and Eric Copeland to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Whittet Books Ltd has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

      ISBN 978 1 873580 79 0

      To Ailsa Brown,

      the ‘wife of a farmer but not a farmer’s wife’.

      Contents

      Introduction

      Chapter 1 Where to put them

      Chapter 2 How to buy your pigs

      Chapter 3 Moving and handling

      Chapter 4 Feeding

      Chapter 5 Health, disease and vets

      Chapter 6 Husbandry and stress

      Chapter 7 Regulations

      Chapter 8 The end result

      Chapter 9 History fragments

      Chapter 10 Disasters

      Useful addresses

      Equipment suppliers

      Bibliography

      Introduction

      Meet a socially lively, boisterous, highly intelligent, sexually uninhibited animal with an apparent keen and wicked sense of humour, and which when securely housed is a wonder at reducing human stress. They are also exasperating, loveable, fascinating, profitable in a sane economy and highly addictive.

      Winston Churchill with his usual sagacity summed them up.

      ’Cats’, he said, ’look down on you, dogs look up at you, but pigs look you straight in the eye like an equal.’

      Rub a pig’s back and you get a frank glance which says that you’re not alone in the world. P. G. Wodehouse knew a thing or two about human nature and swine when he created the laid back Empress of Blandings, and what other beast but the pig could have become the movers and thinkers of Orwell’s Animal Farm?

      He had them well cast; watch pigs closely and you’ll see them stand back, consider and think through their next move. Look long enough at a large group of pigs and you’ll see a lot of recognisable human strengths and foibles.

      More recently research and experience has shown the remarkably soothing effect of looking after pigs on tough and violent characters in civilian and military prisons.

      Pigs seem to have a remarkable fascination for a wide swathe of the human race, as seen by their constant appearance on cards, posters, in children’s books, as ornaments and a huge variety of other gifts, tacky and otherwise.

      Speak to anyone middle-aged and over who has lived in the countryside; more often than not they will have had some connection with pigs, however remote, and their eyes brighten when they tell you about it. The main reason that pigs were kept by country folk in times past was not for their company, however, but for the compelling reason of keeping hunger at bay during the long bleak winter.

      Nowadays, when few of us know real hunger, keeping a pig, apart from producing cheap and delectable meat low in cholesterol, satisfies the squirrel instinct in us by producing this largesse from food which would otherwise be wasted.

      Given most people’s loss of contact with farming this folk memory of pigs seems doomed. Perhaps not so? It’s possible that a new generation will one day be boring their children with nostalgic tales of when their parents kept a pig.

      Under the combination of increasingly tedious travel to work, the stress of city life and modern communications many people are now working from home. Before long the largest businesses will have networks of informal workers either working from home or from high-tech rural offices.

      Many will then be able to fulfil their dream of living in the country which often brings with it having a bit of land, be it only half an acre. There is also the squirrel instinct brought on by the threat of long-term hard times to come, the desire to batten down the hatches and indulge in self sufficiency.

      The ‘country’ in the broadest sense is also where large numbers of healthy fit people retire. It’s often at this point that the idea of keeping livestock and more particularly a pig starts to intrude the subconscious, maybe after reading entertaining self-sufficiency books on a winter’s evening. You have a large garden or a half acre of land doing nothing; why not keep a couple of pigs?

      The difficulty arises when you start thinking about where to begin. The obvious answer at first glance is to find somewhere to house them, buy a couple of small ones and some food and watch them grow into joints of pork. Alternatively you can buy some expensive textbooks which will get you slowly nowhere because none of them start from ground zero. They tell you what to do but not how. They are all naturally enough written for aspiring or established pig farmers and assume a basic knowledge and intention to keep swine on a scale to keep body and soul together, an ambition not always achieved.

      Another way is to ask a professional pig farmer but he will be busy working a twelve hour day trying to avoid going bankrupt. Also he’ll be thinking on an entirely different scale. You could offer to work for him free to get some pig know-how which might be interesting for both of you.

      Keeping pigs on a small scale should be relatively simple, though that is something no seasoned pig farmer would ever say out loud. As long as you follow the ‘do unto others’ principle and keep them warm, comfortable and well fed while using affection, a bit of commonsense and acquired know-how, your disasters will be on a small scale.

      The problems arise in getting the know-how without it costing you money, and in the complications inherent in our over-regulated society. Time was if you wanted to keep a pig in the garden you just went ahead and did it under the shelter of the Public Health Act 1936, Section 92, where any disputes were judged by the Health and Environment Officer on the basis of how it would affect a reasonable person. He, the reasonable person, is sadly long dead and gone, though if you live in a remote enough area you could perhaps pretend that he lives on. The rest of you had better read the chapter on regulations.

      On grants and the European Union, should this cross your mind, don’t expect any of the untold billions we pay out to come trickling down to you. Pigs, unlike most of agriculture, have had no subsidies for many decades, hence no pork and bacon mountain.

      So that you know what you’re getting, then, this book aims to answer the questions you don’t yet know enough to ask and to give you know-how about the sharp end of keeping a pig, like when it’s poorly and how to move it from A to B. The book also tells you how to keep the bureaucrats at bay and, if you fancy it, make the best sausages you have ever tasted.

      Notes from a large pig farm

      Every night before bed I pull on my slightly

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