HOWTHORNE HOMESTEAD REVISITED
(Page 3 of 5)
March/April 1975
By Jane Musser
One of the kids developed bloat so we hunted through some of our literature and found an old remedy (in MOTHER NO. 18) which involved drenching the animal with a one to one water/kerosene solution. (We used a weaker two to one ratio because the kid was so small.) The mixture was administered with my kitchen baster and it worked! We figured the bloat had occurred because we were pan feeding the kids and they probably had gotten too much air when they ate so we switched to bottle feeding.
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A few days later, though, we found one kid dead and blown up like a balloon. Naturally, we were upset. To make matters worse, the other baby had a slight swelling on its left side. We used the water/kerosene solution again (with good success) and visited a neighboring farmer to see what the trouble could have been. He knew immediately that the cause was over feeding (it's amazing what knowledge these old timers have stored up) so we cut the feedings down to six ounces every four hours and have had no problems since. When the kid was six weeks old we sold her to a nearby farmer we didn't keep her because Nellie herself yields only two quarts a day at freshening and the kid probably wouldn't have done much better.
We had originally planned to raise two pigs this year unfortunately, the whole venture started out as a catastrophe. We bought two six week old piglets from a neighboring farmer and brought them home in burlap bags (around here, the standard method for transporting the animals). By the time we got them to our place, one of the little porkers had died. We were awfully upset by this, but were assured that it wasn't too unusual since pigs often succumb to stress. So we butchered the dead piglet which resulted in 20 pounds of the tenderest pork we've ever tasted and, next day, Mick went out to feed the remaining squealer.
Well, it seems our pen wasn't high enough and the critter had escaped during the night. We spent days looking for the little rascaland sighted it several times in the neighborhood but were never able to come close enough to catch him. Not to be daunted, Mick built the pen up to a height of four feet, and bought one more hog. We had no trouble with that one (thank goodness!) and he's now in the freezer in the form of pork, ham, bacon, and sausage.
BUTCHERING
Converting that live, 200 pound hog into a supply of meat is a story in itself. It all began on a cold (in the 30's) morning when a friend of Mick's came over to do the initial slaughtering. He first filled a huge kettle with 25 gallons of water and started a fire under it. Once the water was steaming, it was time to "do in" the pig.
The animal was shot in the head with a .22 and promptly stuck in the throat with a double bladed sticking knife. The pigpen has been built without a door the hog was confined all summer and the pen had been moved from spot to spot to give him fresh pasture and so part of the structure had to be torn down to get the critter out.
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