If you’re singing it and it’s now stuck in your head then I’m sorry, it just had to be done!
The temporary (…) insanity of the summer period is finally dying down. We stretched ourselves to the limits this year and the pigs may have taken over the living room as well as the pig room at one point, but as I kept reminding my husband, it was only for a few weeks! Admittedly they were a long few weeks, with a lot of hard work involved, a full 20kg of nuggets consumed and approx. 40kg of hay, but it was worth every moment.
Technically it wasn’t a summer of 69. Depending if you’re looking at boarders just in the summer holidays or from the start of July to the first week of September the numbers are a different, and if you take grooming only piggies into account then you can add on a good few more.
In the 62 days covering July-September we boarded 70 pigs. 44 of these were boars, 26 sows.
In the 46 days marking the first school summer holiday boarders’ arrival to the last to leave, 63 pigs holidayed with us. 40 boars, 23 sows.
As you can see, I’ve only been a little outnumbered on the male-female balance in recent weeks.
Every one of those pigs had their nails clipped along with 8 who visited (or who I visited) just for grooms, and add on my own 3 boys, I clipped a grand total of 1,134 tiny nails. I also weighed every pig and noted a surprising number of piggies over the 1.3kg mark, with no correlation between weight and gender. There were just as many 1.3kg sows as boars! I’m working on a database to come up with an average weight, though there are a wide number of factors which have to be taken into account – we have a few youngsters in there who aren’t finished growing yet.
The heaviest however *is* finished growing and currently sits at a whopping 1511g, and he happens to be one of the residents – Rupert, my youngest!
I’m looking forward to a short break with no boarders at all at some point soon to reset and to process the ups and downs of recent weeks, before things start to get busy again later in September. Before you know it, it will be October half-term, then – dare I say it – Christmas & New Year…I’ve already had quite a few bookings for those dates so if you do want to get your piggies in, I’d advise doing so ASAP!