Sometimes it is important to pay attention when others are talking to you.
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
Until next time…
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This is ingenious. It makes perfect sense. Mother's instincts notices something is different and wants to keep it from harming her other babies! But if they ALL smell different..."but I know these are my piglets"...then she must rely on her eyes...and then, the injured or different piglet doesn't get excluded.
It is an example of how God uses us, mankind, to tend to his creation. The creation is fallen, and in the wild that piglet would get excluded or killed. But when man follows God's wisdom in nature, harmony(though still fleeting) can be returned.
Permaculture sorta gets this work-towards-harmony, but sadly, usually tries to write God out of the equation. Little do people realize that God, in the Garden of Eden was creating the first culture of permanence(perma-culture) and the first sustainable agriculture (PERManent AgriCULTURE).
Great story @papa-pepper. Thank you for sharing it!
@papa-pepper always comes up with good stuff!
Speaking of Return of Surplus. The Steemit community has been very wonderful to me and I have some FREE Steemit art to share if anyone would like to jazz up their BLOG Articles.
Very, very well said! Fully agreed!
Thanks for making a REAL COMMENT!
good job
Thanks! And welcome to steemit!
And I thought Bill Molison came up with permaculture. 😄
Lol!
are the pigs pets or do you eat them? jw
They will be pets until we eat them. So we love them and take good care of them until then.
Great post with some great info! It can be tricky getting a sow to re-adopt her piglets!
I was actually working on this one for the morning, but it looks like it got posted.... not sure. Enjoy it anyways.
Nevermind the glitch. I was checking Steemit right before bed and saw it had just posted a minute prior.
So a nice 'bedtime store' for this adult! ;-P
Glad to hear it!
Nice pet @papa-pepper I want also keep Pig in my farm but society india doesn't except the pig
That is too bad.
Well done on sharing that information to the kids and folks out here! Yup going to share it for others. I did the same with kittens and a few mommas.
You never know when info like this may come in handy. Thanks again!
Hey @papa-pepper what an incredible post. Caring and sharing the knowledge are some of the most incredible things one can do and you seem to be doing both. Knowledge gained from experience and passed on is knowledge in the purest form. Thanks for sharing those experiences and knowledge.
Oinkment!!
It's better to be safe than sorry , I hope the piggie from last time is feeling better !
Spreading knowledge does wonders
It was doing well when we left it. Thanks for your concern.
Very nice and good post for us. @na722
Thank you @na722.
I heard an old timer dairy cattleman say that he would put lysol on foster calves that he would buy to put on his nurse cows, same idea, Hide the scent of the calf so the mama cow wouldn't reject it. Interesting info indeed.
Interesting. Must be some truth to it. That sow was all snout when I put him back in.
That's very smart. I'm glad you didn't get corny and call it "oinkment." lol. Smell to animals is so important. We humans don't respond to a child's scent like many animals respond. Right now in TN I see a lot of news articles begging people not to touch baby deer because their human scent causes the mom's to abandon their young. Lots of people think they are helping by feeding baby deer when their mom's aren't around but they could cause it to be abandoned.
A lot of people seem to do that these days. Unfortunate problem.
I remember doing that to piglets too. Also you have to watch the mother sow and the runt of the litter. Mama sow is not always nice to the littlest piglet.
Good pointer on the runt. We will keep an eye out when we get back.
That's awesome so the Mom can't tell the scent apart! Nature is amazing and so is this oil! Nice! Cute piglets!
It works very well!
Great job by the kids to care for animals in general. I guess they didn't want mama pig to alienate the hurt one or the siblings to do that either.
Yes, those kids care a lot, and they do a really good job too.
We've used chicken ointment before. For some reason that's blue too.
Luckily the piglets haven't hurt each other too much yet. I love that yours are black. They look like wild boars. Our Sow is black and the hog was white mostly. None of the piglets turned out black.
Here is our video of the 2 week old piglets.
https://steemit.com/steem/@camb/piglet-update-2-uploading-video-to-steem-and-ipfs-without-dtube-tutorial-instructions
Very cool. I'll check it out!
Thanks for sharing this post, It is the farmers that feed the world. I hope Bo-bo is ok and doing well.
So far so good on Bobo!
Old timers have lots of wisdom to share. And we better listen or so much knowledge will be lost. We are fortunate to have some very experienced plant breeders in our area and we are trying to video their lessons as much as possible.
Excellent idea. Now is the time to make sure that we don't lose all of those generations worth of information.
Agreed! I am sometimes shocked how little practical knowledge people have!
Nice article dearie. Keep it up
Thank you @amade!
Vanilla on the backs of kittens works too. Moma cat can't tell the difference between her own and the orphan slipped into the litter. We also put a dab on the mama's nose for good measure.
That would smell wonderful!
Wow they are cute
Corona, I prefer the liquid version for myself, if you know what I mean!
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STOPYes.. You could market Papa Pepper's Pig oil.
Mother pigs won't know what hit em! J/K
Hmmm... perhaps I could sell it for STEEM!
nicee
I learn something new from you everyday!!! I look very forward to your posts :) Thanks for what you do!! SUNSHINE247
Oh pigs are being treated so specially, thats different to know. In my country they live stray and die 😔 .
Pinkie pepper looks real cute in those googles . 😎
Wow, that's totally new info. I thought the motor oild would have some healing properties. Between, just like that I was wondering, that your kids take care of these piglets. But are they comfortable with the fact that these piglets will be soon eaten?
The children understand that the pigs will be eaten. The know that meat we eat comes from animals, so no matter what meat it is, an animal died. They would rather enjoy interacting them first.
Oh, that's cool!! Mature children!
Motor oil is toxic.
Its awesome to see you and @little-peppers taking good care of the piglets with great love and affection..shows that you guys have a good heart ...bless you all. I am impressed and hence why you always get an upvote frome me. Wish you a blessed weekend and greetings to @papa-pepper tribe
Ingenious trick, and so simple. I'm glad you chose to use something other than motor oil, that stuff is toxic.
Brilliant idea, I will try to commit that to memory.
I had a similar experience in a completely different venue. I used to listen to a woman talk all about her spinning, ways to spin, which way to choose for what result. I was interested but didn't do any spinning at all. Then years later I was sitting at my first spinning wheel and all of that knowledge just sort of surfaced as I needed it.
It's marvellous how much knowledge we can soak up without even knowing it.
Very cool! Good thing that you listened to her!
Those pigs look pretty cute. I like how you make comparisons with life
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Thanks for sharing. It's probably not something I can use for chickens, but I can still hope that one day we'll be in a position when piggy things might come into consideration.
Ha. Thank you for the story. It made me smile and it's lodged deep in my brain now ready to come out if ever I need it to, like it did for you!
Good for you, @papa-pepper! It seems like a great way to teach kids important principles of life. Not only that, but I'll bet the sow and all her little pigglets are pretty happy about it! Thank you for all the positive contributions you're making for our Steemit community.
This is what the steemit community is all about. Giving of self knowledge, helping others and getting people engaged. There is a lot of information in your post.
The post isn't just about helping out one little piggy. The comments you have received show this. It is a post that I can see as truly being ( about the children ).
Congratulations @papa-pepper!
Your post was mentioned in the hit parade in the following category:
Nice post.. Unyu unyu
Follow me please @umiemilia
Thanks all