Pig help please

[DEKE]

I have an 800 lb hog that needs to go to market.  She is gimpy in her right rear but she can walk 100 ft thru the pasture when she wants.  It does wear her out, but she can do it. 

I tried loading her onto the stock trailer today and she would not have it.  She won't go in there.  We tried several kinds of food to entice her, we tried poking her gently and poking her not gently with the points of a cultivator.  I tried to get a sling under her belly and lift her with the tractor, but before I could tension the sling, she went wild and we couldn't get her up.  We tried scaring her.  We even went and borrowed a cattle prod and it didn't get her up the ramp. 

She has been such a good pig and I hate being mean to her.  She has never known stress except for the day we brought her home and today.  Even with all that terrible treatment today, she is still very sweet and gentle to us.  I did get briefly crushed between her and a fence post with no damage.  That was just her trying to save herself from the trailer monster. 

I have a church/soup kitchen standing by to take most of the meat.  They are expecting to be able to make a few hundred meals of pulled pork sandwiches. 

Now I've missed the butcher date.  I don't know what else to do.  Every trick I've ever used to load recalcitrant horses, cows, pigs, wives, and children has not worked.  Ideas?? 

[TxGal]

To get our pigs in the trailer we run a garden hose through one of the window openings and turn it on. They are drawn to it like a moth to a lightbulb. Living in blisterin' hot TX makes the trailer look like an oasis.

[Ozarks Tom]

I'm sure this sound terribly insensitive, but it's called a .223 and and come-along. Just have the butcher alerted you're bringing in a carcass. I've had to do it a couple times when they just wouldn't load. When you think about it, it's more mercy than cruelty.

[joebill]

I used to have troubles like that, but you have to figure on loading them the day or so before. It takes time. You just show them where the food and water is in the trailer, make sure that is the ONLY food and water they can access, go away. Make sure you can close the gates in a hurry when needed. I load them in my trailer easily because the door is narrow, but I have loaded them for my neighbor and had to put a rope across to one door so I could both slam one door and lock the other from the same side.

If the ramp is easy, they will almost always go eat when you stop pestering them, but time and hunger and thirst are on your side if you start loading a day or so ahead of time, and if you miss your date you can just feed them in the trailer for another few days, stopping a day before the deed if you sort of like the guy who butchers them.

If your door latch is clumsy to fasten in a hurry, you can tie off to the open side of the door, then dally up to the other door post and PULL! A dallied (wrapped) catch rope around a door post will hold weight the same as it would around a saddle horn, and unless there is a big crack at the bottonm they can see through they are not known for trying to push at solid walls.

They are really all about eating and when you leave them alone their default move is to go for the food, even if it is in the hated trailer.....Joe

[paisley]

A lady at the stable had a horse fell in 💘 with my horse.
That lady was a good rider and showed with her is a but loading was hell.
I was taking My horse out and She wanted to get in the trailer.
So, Mary brought her horse out and with my horse in the trailer still and suddenly all he want want to get in.

So, my horse went to all the shows, and Mary became my trainer
And when my stable was built the two horse moved together.

So....can some other pig join her?

[DEKE]

Sept 26, 2018 23:55:19 GMT Ozarks Tom said:

I'm sure this sound terribly insensitive, but it's called a .223 and and come-along. Just have the butcher alerted you're bringing in a carcass. I've had to do it a couple times when they just wouldn't load. When you think about it, it's more mercy than cruelty.

Butcher won't take dead animals. I thought it was a usda requirement. No?

[DEKE]

Sept 27, 2018 1:07:38 GMT paisley said:

So....can some other pig join her?

We tried that. No luck

[DEKE]

Joe, we are going to try feeding in the trailer. I had already thought of that, but it didn't solve my problem today. This butcher takes pigs only on Wednesdays so I REALLY wanted to get the job done today. Thanks.

[Ozarks Tom]

I don't know what the USDA requirements are, they might have a time limit after the kill to be butchered. All I know is our butcher has no problem processing an animal that was killed in the same morning I bring them in. I've had to do it twice with animals that were just too dangerous to try loading. It could be our butcher is a bit more lenient and flexible with the rules, but I'd think explaining the problem and getting the carcass there within an hour or two might solve the problem.

If your butcher is willing to work with you on timing, I like trying joebill , method first.

Or, just do like I always do, plead ignorance, for some reason they always believe me.

[joebill]

Butchers have to allow for the general stupidity of some of the public, SOME of whom would shoot the hog, get drunk, or maybe get drunk and THEN shoot the hog, sober up some time later, load it and take it to the butcher, then try to hold him responsible when they all got sick on nasty meat or he threw it all away in disgust.

If you allow an already shot pig through the door from a serious sober person and it gets observed, the belligerent drunks will NOT be far behind.....Joe

[Ozarks Tom]

joebill, I'll have you know that a 8am I might indeed be belligerent, but never drunk.

[Deleted]

In our area, there are locals who come out with a truck bearing a big honking scaffold thingy and a freezer.

They drop the animal here on the farm, bleed it, gut it, peel the hide, give us the humbles, dump the unusables in the compost bin, section the carcass, and haul it to the butcher. All this for the princely sum of $60.

Maybe your butcher knows someone who will do this for you, DEKE .

[Deleted]

what are the "humbles"? @pony,

[DEKE]

Great idea, Pony. I doubt there is anything like that around here. We are very rural, but not farm country for the most part. Most of the acreage is in pine forests on my side of town or race and jumper horse industry on the other side of town. But I'll give it a shot.

[DEKE]

Sept 27, 2018 19:06:54 GMT @sunny225 said:

what are the "humbles"? @pony ,

You've heard of the expression, "eating humble pie"? 

from Wiki:

The expression derives from umble pie, a pie filled with the chopped or minced parts of a beast's 'pluck' – the heart, liver, lungs or 'lights' and kidneys, especially of deer but often other meats. Umble evolved from numble (after the French nomble), meaning 'deer's innards'.[1][2]

It has occasionally been suggested that 'umbles' were considered inferior food and that in medieval times, the pie was often served to lower-class people, possibly following speculation in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable but there is little evidence for this.[citation needed] Early references in cookbooks such as Liber Cure Cocorum present a grand dish with exotic spices.

Although "umbles" and the modern word "humble" are etymologically unrelated, each word has appeared with and without the initial "h" after the Middle Ages until the 19th century. Since the sound "h" is dropped in many dialects, the phrase was rebracketed as "humble pie".[citation needed] While "umble" is now gone from the language, the phrase remains, carrying the fossilized word as an idiom.

At my house, any of those humble pieces we don't like become chicken or pig chow.