So You Want to Pick Up Pig Poop

Or maybe you don’t. This would be because you’ve never done it before. If you had, you would want to get back out there. 

Picking up pig poop is one of the most peaceful things you can do. If Patsy and Judy, the Trouble Sisters, decide to leave you alone.

Assuming they do—which tempts fate, as they love nothing more than confounding human assumptions--you’re out there in the field, with the mountain rising just beyond, surrounded by white and yellow flowers, sleeping pigs, and dragonflies helicoptering through the air.

It is a pig-poop meditation. I’m surprised the farm isn’t over-run with Buddhist monks. It’s right up their alley--a “chop wood, carry water” thing but with poop.

Of course Judy comes over to say hello. First to the wheelbarrow, which to her is a giant scratching post that has the added benefit of turning over and dumping out poop—for the human this is Trouble; for Judy it’s Mission Accomplished.

I run back to the wheelbarrow and hold it steady against the onslaught of Judy’s scratching. It’s battening down the hatches on a ship during a storm at sea, but the wheelbarrow and I make it out untipped. Patsy gives up and lays down on her side. This is universal pig language for “stop whatever nonsense you’re doing and scratch my belly.” 

I oblige. Scratching pig bellies is a meditation too. You can know you’ve succeeded when the pig closes her eyes, yawns and stretches.

Mission Accomplished. 

Pogo comes out to investigate on his way to the med center. A break must be taken to pet him.

Another break to notice a small tomato plant that has grown from seeds the pigs eat, then poop out. 

The seeds will grow given half a chance. Which is about all the pigs allow the plants before they eat them again. And poop them out again.

It’s the perfect cycle of life.

If the field were full of monks in saffron and maroon robes, each with a pooper-scooper (discovered to be the best pig-poop utensil, after much experimenting with shovels, small brooms, dustpans and rakes), we could ring a gong to start and to stop. Or just close one of the gates in the goat and sheep barn. They sound like gongs on their own, making the barn seem that much more like a temple.

At the farm’s annual Blessing of the Animals, it seems we have the order reversed. The blessings should actually come from the animals to us, and not the other way around, no matter what monk or priest or shaman is there to do the blessing.

Back in the pig field, my wheelbarrow fills up slowly. Swallows pass me on the way to the barn. The yellow butterflies gather on the poop in the sun. Pigs are asleep surrounded by grass in the field. Pigs are asleep in the barn. The only sound is the creak of the wheelbarrow as I push it out of the field. 

I empty the wheelbarrow into the tractor bucket and hang up the pooper scooper for another day. Meditation is a journey that changes you. Maybe someday the monks will come, pick up pig poop and explain why. 

TODAY'S NEWS:

Truffle the hen died this morning. She'd had a mass in her belly six months ago. Jenny had tried to drain it, but it was solid and nothing could be done. We put her back out to roam freely with her friends, Peanut Butter, Edie and Hetty, not knowing how much time she had left with us. 

For over six months, she lived her life just the same as before. Then on Saturday, Francesco noticed she was huddled in a corner in the pig barn. We brought her in and the next morning she was gone. 

But we had those six extra months with her, much longer than anyone would have predicted. 

We thank her for sharing her life with us and with her other chicken friends. 

The barn feels empty without her. 

Coming to Sanctuary

A lot of beings find their way here, a lot in the last couple of weeks.

Early one morning, someone snuck down to the tool shed and left a cage, a note and Mustard. Then they crept back out again, unseen.

This is Mustard. 

This is the note.

One thing about volunteering at the Sanctuary is that you never know what people are going to do. Animals are so much easier to figure out. 

Dawnell adopted Mustard. He has a new life and a new name, Po. So Po starts over in what could be considered guinea pig heaven: a home with someone who treasures him. Possibly that's any animal's nirvana. 

Several days ago, we took in Zoe, a 10-year-old pig who came from a hoarder in Vermont who had sent Zoe’s herd-mates to slaughter, 17 of them. Pigs will mourn for days over the loss of a friend. Zoe was scared, panting and pacing when she arrived. Finally she laid down, then  wouldn’t get up for hours. To sit with her was to feel waves of sadness.

A few days later, a Jeep on 212 hit a heron. Some guys were working on the road and saw the accident. They called to Phil who was near the steer field. He found the heron in tall weeds and carried him to the med center. 

From there we took him to Hurley Vet where Ravensbeard, a wildlife rehab place, would pick him up after surgery. Unfortunately, the vets discovered his back was broken, along with both hips. There was nothing they could do but euthanize him.

Next to come to the farm was Little Dude, a pig who was rescued from a farmer who was starving two pigs together. The other pig starved to death in front of Little Dude.

That's Edie the hen sitting with Little Dude. 

Here Zach says hello nose to nose. 

Little Dude is now sharing a stall with Zoe. They sleep next to each other, stretched out, but we have to feed them separately as they’re both very food aggressive and start fighting. Some fears run deep. Zoe has lots of scars on her sides. The first night they were together and fought over food, Little Dude laid down and wouldn’t move. Sophie brought a bowl to him and sat with him while he ate. I sat with Zoe.

We don’t know much about their stories. We approach them with open hearts to feel what they’re feeling, to do what we can to understand. There’s no formula, but they can know they’re not alone anymore. We’re in this with them. And we're so glad they're here. Every time someone new comes here, the quote from the last chapter of Black Beauty comes to mind: "...and so I have nothing to fear; and here my story ends. My troubles are all over and I am at home." 

Pete Gets A Massage from a Somewhat Ineffective Masseuse (Namely, Me)

Pete the pig has been having some trouble walking again. He had made tremendous progress in the last few months, but then had a set-back after the heat wave a couple of weeks ago.

We've been giving him a gallon pitcher of Gatorade because the electrolytes can help him in the heat. Here he is today with citrus-flavored Gatorade foam coming out of his mouth. You can also see how his back legs splay out. This isn't normal or most likely healthy, either.

When he lays down, I try the technique that Joanne, a volunteer who's a licensed massage therapist, showed me. It involves pushing in on his thigh and hip (particularly the right one, which seems to give him the most trouble).

The theory being that Pete grew too fast for his joints (being a factory farm-bred Duroc pig) and the gentle pushing eases his leg back into the hip socket.

Whether our theory is right or not, Pete seems to love the pressure and settles in for a nap. There are few if any pig masseuses, or pig chiropractors or for that matter pig vets. Or not yet. As humanity's circle of compassion widens, the circle of experts to relieve animal pain will too. For now, we rely on the animal to tell us what feels good, what seems to help.

Some humans bred Durocs to grow too fast for their bodies to keep up--which results in pigs like Pete. Some humans spend hours to help one Duroc pig heal and re-learn how to walk. Some make money selling Durocs, some connect to their hearts, one by one. We are the ones who get to see Pete grunt hello in the morning and shove his nose into mud and stand up on his own, like he was doing a couple of months ago, meandering into the middle of the field and grazing, on a cool summer evening.
We're the lucky ones.

Post massage, Pete rehydrates with some water from Julie. And some mud.

Tomorrow, the real deal--Joanne--is coming to give massages to Pete and some others who could use it. Until then, Pete has to make do with what love we can transmit through such crude vehicles as buckets and Gatorade and mud puddles and our often-ineffective, but well-intentioned hands. 

A Few Members of Our Herd

On Friday, the rain didn’t enter the picture till late afternoon. It came down over the mountain to the north. The winds picked up and the air cooled.

There was a pause, a holding of breath, then the goats came sprinting into the barn and the sky let loose. Dawnell ran to get in the chickens who were outside of the med center. I closed the windows and doors in the goat and sheep barn. The rain was loud on the roof. The steer stayed outside, grazing, but the sheep came in just after the goats. Everyone stood, dripping, listening to the pounding on the roof of the barn.

The rain makes the barn feels like a fort—it’s us vs. the elements. But we’ve got hay and water and shelter and we're with our herd, so here we stay.

Carrying Cassidy into the med center, Dawnell noticed he was thin. Cassidy is a barred rock rooster with a misshaped beak. The top part curves to one side over the bottom. A couple of days ago, he fought through the fence with another rooster who also lives in the med center and who he sees every day, and injured his beak. Now Cassidy's tongue can’t coordinate getting food in, and he’s drooling. 

We decide to syringe feed him. I cut the bottom off an old syringe to make the hole bigger. Trying to get the syringe into his mouth with his head wriggling is pretty much impossible. 

Thus, to Plan B: Dawnell tries making little balls with moistened mash--not unlike rolling cookie dough--and putting them in his mouth. He still moves his head in every possible direction. But once the mash-ball is in his mouth, he swallows and looks around for more. Not that he stops wiggling. How can a rooster head move like that? He's a miracle of rubbery engineering. 


After a half hour, Cassidy’s head is covered in mash and so are we. 

But he has some food in his crop. So we put him back into his cage for the night with one more bowl of mash in case he gets inspired to eat.

Night is about making sure everyone is fed and watered and comfortable and tucked in. And making sure we’re ready for the next sudden rainstorm or heatwave and our friends are too. Which may include us shoving rolled-up balls of seed-mash into their mouths so they’re not hungry while their beaks heal after a senseless fight with another rooster they were friends with the day before. 

We don’t understand everything they do; I’m sure it’s vice versa, too. Tomorrow, Cassidy will wiggle his head like crazy when we hand-feed him. But he’ll eat and be one day closer to a healed beak and eating on his own. He’s our Cassidy, so whatever it takes.

A Day of Bananas

They came like manna from heaven. Actually, Sunflower, a local organic grocery store, called. They had just gotten a shipment of bananas that were all too ripe for people--people being fussier than pigs.

So breakfast for the pigs was bananas, a whole garbage can full of them. Most of the pigs, like Lodo, got right up. 

Although Louie demanded breakfast in bed. When I tossed a few bananas to him, we had a war of wills over whether I’d go in and move the bananas closer to his nose, or refuse to wait on him hand and foot. Patsy resolved it by swooping in and eating both herself. Louie nestled further into his bed of straw and went back to sleep.

Andy pig refused to eat the bananas unless we peeled them for him. He walked around sniffing the bananas with peels and turning his head away—a peel, such a disappointment.

Everyone else got bananas too. The birds had them cut up in their mash. Bob brought a couple of bunches to the steer. The goats got banana treats. Even the humans got in on it—Phil had taken some home the night before and made peanut butter banana bread. We ate it all day in the kitchen.

It reminded me of days late last summer that were days of corn. There was so much sweet corn, people drove it over in trucks. We put bushels of yellow corn into the pig troughs. We husked it and threw it to the chickens who ran to peck off the kernels.

There are random days of bounty when the animals revel in all of the corn or bananas or slightly squished grapes. They don't seem to worry about if it will come again.

This does not mean that they will not grab every banana they can. Alfonso takes a banana and walks away from his friend Petunia as fast as he can with his giant, malformed turkey feet. Bounty doesn’t necessarily mean sharing.

It’s time to start closing the farm for the night. Dawnell looks up how much Kaopectate Lil Jay the goat should get. The banana treats have given him some diarrhea. I come along to hold him by the horns while he gets the dose, but he decides he likes Kaopectate and ends up licking pink all over his mouth.

If there are things undone tonight, we don’t know about them. Or not yet. So much is about noticing what’s right in front of your nose.

The pigs don’t get up fast for dinner. We surmise they’re in a banana coma. The air has cooled and it’s perfect to just let go and relax right where you are: with a stomach full of a morning full of bananas. And a cool evening in a bed of dust and straw under the mountain with the mist rising up and fall still forever away. 

Pink Dirigibles

It's how I generally think of Patsy and Judy. They’ve become more round than any other pigs at the farm. They are round, but they also look like trouble and mischief and curiosity. They don’t let much get by them. You can try to hide whatever you’re doing, but they’ll nose it out. Forget about sneaking food in, it’s impossible. They can smell anything and they love new smells.

I once made the mistake of putting peppermint essence into vitamin E oil to massage Sophie the pig. Judy and Patsy both got up, came over, rolled against Sophie and on top of her and nosed into the peppermint on her back. I couldn’t stop them; I could only apologize to Sophie for having the opposite effect on her relaxation.

It makes me think that I should put peppermint on a pillow for the girls. We have tried to think of toys to keep them amused. I bought a dog’s Kong toy once and put peanuts into the holes. It wasn’t a big hit. I tried to get Patsy to play tug of war with a towel once after she chewed on one I was using to clean hooves. She sort of pulled away, but it bored her fast. She likes snuffling around when I’m cleaning hooves and turning over the water and smelling the hoof brush and flipping the pink tool bin and biting into my boot.

We try to imagine what they’d like with those supersonic noses and their strange sense of humor and stiff bodies that are still so strong they could flip you over with their nose or make a giant bruise on your leg by turning their head. What do they like? What do they dream of? Yes, food, but there’s more to it than that. They might like stories read to them or opera sung. They might like aromatherapy or loofahs applied to the dry skin that forms on their backs in the summer. But most of this is guess work.

Phil made scratching posts for the pigs out of pine trunks and 2x4s and set them into the ground in the pig field. But they bent over under the pig pressure and eventually broke off. We put a horse toy in the yard—one of those balls with a handle. They don’t play with it. It’s like they’re thinking, ‘I’m not a dog—I don’t care that much about having ‘fun’ with you so get over it.” Despite the fact that we’re trying to provide entertainment for them; although I guess that is fun for us.

Who doesn’t want to see a full-grown pig spin around in a circle from sheer joy—spinning in a circle is what they did when they were piglets. Now they do it on rare occasions like the first warm day of spring when the snow starts to melt and drip off the roof of the barn, the sun glints against the wet snow in the pig yard and there’s less white on the mountain and more pine-green.

Andy, on a late winter day

Then the pigs come out, stepping into the snow with their prima-ballerina feet. They spin in circles and grunt and take off at a full-out run. It’s a sight to see and even the pigs can’t blame us for wanting to see it more. They don’t blame us, the pigs, but they also don’t indulge us with empty shows of joy. They know when and how to let it out into the world for us to see and marvel at and remember. 

The Art and Science of the Pig Pedicure

Okay, so in reality, there is no science to a pig pedicure. Or not much. And there's not much art, either.
This isn't beauty school, it's just that we want our pigs to have healthy hooves. Actually we want all pigs everywhere to have healthy hooves and to live out their lives in peace and happiness. But for now we have to settle for making sure our particular pigs' hooves are free of cracks.

Which isn't easy. Pig hooves are like ballerina toe shoes supporting 6 or 7 hundred pounds. Take a look at Pete here.

Big pig, little feet.
And Stubby is over 800 pounds. It's like the whole weight on of the world on the tippy tiny toes of a pig.

Yes, they're waiting to get in for dinner, but they could be waiting stage-left for their entrance in Swan Lake, could they not?

Okay, so we've established the physics problem of lots of pig, miniscule hoof: the hooves crack. And that means we have to treat them.

And at some point, the 'we' might be you.

So, here is what you'll need:

Hoof treating stuff, a syringe for squirting water into cracks for cleaning, and a rag. Look! It's all assembled in a handy pink bin.

All you need now is the pig. 

Preferably a pig with cracked hooves who is conveniently sleeping with the necessary hoof out and ready for you. Like Lodo, here. 

You might not be able to see the crack under all the mud, but it's there. 

So. 

Wash the hoof gently with the rag. 

Then, dry gently too.

Then, apply the Hoof Hardener.

This is really intended for horses, but horse hooves and pig hooves are somewhat similar in structure and needs. 

While the "soundness and reliability" promised on the label don't sound like bad things for a pig hoof, we really would prefer something more like "for an exquisite pig hoof that will not only be strong and healthy but will display for a world sadly ignorant of the tremendous character and charm of pigs, just how much we value and love them, including their hoof health."

Something like that. 

At any rate, we are where we are in the evolution of humanity and we can't expect commercial package labeling to lead the way to a new millennia of compassion and understanding. 

So, set aside your Gandhi-esque aspirations for the moment, and apply Hoof Hardener to the clean, dry hoof. 

And maybe blow on it a little too. If you have one of those small hand-held fans found at The Seven Happiness Nail Salon in Brooklyn, all the better. 

Now you are done, so you can take a moment to admire your accomplishment. Healthy hoof, happy Lodo!

Only three more hooves to go. And then there's Louie after that, and Stubby after that. And at some point thereafter, all of your other Gandhi-worthy aspirations of universal compassion. 

Volunteering can be kind of a full-time job.