Stock handling!

I am often asked by people "what does a ranger do?" - The reply invariably involves land management, environmental education, survey and monitoring and guided walks. As of yesterday I can now add "stock handling" to the list.

By stock handling I do not just mean moving a couple of chickens (this fun is still to come!) but I mean wrestling with a 500kg pig, 3 piglets, 2 adult cows and 2 calves. I would like to share a couple of observations with you:

1. Animals do not like being moved in trailers
2. Pigs are sly, cunning and very intelligent! 
3. Pigs have a sweet tooth, but are intelligent enough to make you "think" they are going into the trailer so that you give them more goodies, and then charge right through your wooden boards that are used to direct them!
4. Wooden boards do not work well with 500kg pigs!
5. Piglets do not like being loaded into trailers when you need them to go in, but will quite happily wander in and out when you already have them at their destination.
6. When trying to put a 500kg pig into a trailer, one should leave approximately 3 hours!
7. A 500kg pig will not go into a trailer if it does not want to, but a 500kg pig that HAS gone into trailer quite often cannot get out of it again if it has to go backwards.
8. Putting a calf in a trailer to encourage it´s mother inside is good in principle, but not when said calf seems to have lost it´s voice and won´t call to it´s mother!

So after many hours wrestling, sweet-talking and generally swearing (in the nicest possible way) at our lovely collection of animals, we now eventually have 1 pig, 3 piglets, 2 adult cows and 2 calves at Skalanes. All will hopefully help in some way with the Lupin control and some will become part of our sustainability plan (or "dinner" as we like to call it).