by George Collins » Wed Sep 12, 2012 2:39 am
Graham, this will be Toy Ridge Farms' (that's the name under which we will ultimately market the meat), first experience with Berkshires. Maybe they are a wimpy breed and need guard-geese for protection. If so, we're in luck because Younfblood keeps several geese on hand for use as a natural defoliant.
Having said that though, if these hogs need guard-geese, they will be the first hogs I have any experience with that needs such. In the past, you would MUCH rather go into a pasture with a pissed-off brahma bull than into a pasture containing a 700 pound boar hog.
I remember once when on a naval ship being transported to the Persian Gulf to participate in Desert Storm, on of my naive fellow Marines stated something along the lines of, "Pit bulls are the baddest animals on earth."
Several of us country boys overheard him and fell out of our boots laughing. Guys that hunt wild hogs with whole packs of pit bulls, who dress those pit bulls in armored jackets, reportedly get more than two hunting seasons out of an individual dog but rarely. After a couple seasons, they are so ripped up and broken up that they become useless.
Iffn a hog had a personalized license plate it would read 1TUFASS.
Iffn a hog had a bumper sticker it'd read, "Mike Tyson? He tasted a'ight."
My grandfather told Youngblood and Youngblood told me, "Three things on a farm you best keep sceered o'ya: yore stud hoss, yore bull and yore bo-hog. And mungst em, it best be the bo-hog if it's airy of'em."
The reason being, the bull or the stud horse are only looking to whip you. The hog is looking to eat you. You might can live through a butt whuppin. Ya can't live through being eaten.
Perhaps the single best deterrent to theft of farm equipment is to put such in a pasture that contains several sows with pigs and/or a boar. If you always drive your truck into the pasture to feed him, he will associate the sound of a truck entering the pasture as "Dinner Time!" and come a-running. Now imagine if a would-be thief drove into your pasture, jumped out to hook up to your trailer and found himself looking down the gaping maw of a thousand pounds of tusk wielding, hungry boar hog and here said thief is without a bucket of corn.
I'm not sure a goose would add much to that equation.
"Solve world hunger, tell no one." "The, the, the . . . The Grinch!"
"If you can't beat them, bite them."