IF ONLY ONE OF YOUR PIGLETS GOT HURT, WHY DID YOU PUT OINTMENT ON ALL OF THEM?

Sometimes it is important to pay attention when others are talking to you.

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Before @papa-pepper moved to Arkansas, he worked in a warehouse up in Wisconsin. One of his coworkers would often share stories about growing up on a farm. Since @papa-pepper did not grow up on a farm, a lot of what he heard sounded interesting and different. Not all of it made sense, but I still listened and pondered.

Some of the things that the man shared with me fall into the category of stuff that must be learned by living it out. Perhaps some of it has made it into books somewhere, but far too often the people actually living the lives are too busy living that life to write books about it, so the information in some volumes may be lacking.

PUTTING MOTOR OIL ON PIGLETS

One of the peculiar stories involved putting motor oil on piglets. Exactly what the story or reason had been escaped @papa-pepper over the years, but I still recalled that there was some reason that the man had once put motor oil on his piglets.

When the sow that @smailer bought for us gave birth, the memory was once again recalled, but the reason still remained a mystery. Then, Bo-bo got stepped on and we stitched up his wound. We applied a generous amount of medicinal ointment to the wound and returned it to the pen.

Soon, the giant snout of his mom was sniffing around to locate this new scent.

NOW I REMEMBER!

At that moment, I had a memory return from deep within my brain. The exact context had involved getting one sow to nurse the piglet of another sow. Without covering up the scent of the foster piglet, the new mom would most likely not nurse it. However, if the piglets all smelled the same, then the mother would not be able to tell the difference.

The man who passed on this knowledge had used motor oil. As I recalled, he had provided two different approaches. The first was to coat all the piglets in motor oil, so they all would smell the same. The other option was to put the oil on the mother’s nose, which would have the same result. I supposed that you could combine both of those options if you really wanted to keep your pigs well oiled.

The second that our sow went sniffing for Bo-bo, I remembered. Soon, I had put some ointment on all nine of the piglets.

For good measure the snout of the sow got a dose too.

TIME TO PASS IT ON

Just as the man had once taught me about this with his story while we were working, now it came time for me to pass on the information too.

The @little-peppers like the animal chores anyway, so helping the piglets in this way soon became a favorite chore.

They would carefully take care of the wound on Bo-bo, and then add a little to all of his siblings.

While the sow was eating, they would get a bit on her nose too.

When we left Arkansas for our trip up to Wisconsin, all of the piglets were still alive and well, and the sow had never treated Bo-bo any differently. Once the wound was holding itself together, we took the stitches out to.

We can’t wait to get back and check on them all, but for now we have the memories and the knowledge that our friends are taking care of them. We figured that we would share this story with all of you, just like the man once shared it with me, just in case you ever needed to recall it

As always, she’s Pinkie-Pepper and here's the proof:

proof-of-ointment

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Until next time…

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