Author:
Hon, you have been giving me information about horses I never knew. I wasn't questioning your wisdom about horses nor your data you have posted. My knowledge is strictly farm knowledge growing up with the critters.
You mentioned the horse lady in California. I googled and she built stables in Texas. Her kind of equine business was built around the showmanship end of horses. Mine was ankle deep in manure, mud, and was that damn horse gonna save my butt or get me killed? Lucky me, the horses always came through in good times and bad. We had a working relationship. We took care of each other.
Cowboys and cowgirls have changed over the years. I have friends still ridding but jeeze Louise, they load up their horses, drive for two or three hundred miles, saddle up, ride the ridding trails, and come home. Some one shoot me if that is all that is left of the cowboys. I love horses but not that way. We meant something to one another.
I'm not gonna tell my age but I'm from a time when cowboys, cowgirls, horses, and cows meant a different purpose for throwing a blanket and saddle on a horse. Those times are gone now as the "cowboy" saddles up on his four wheeler and heads out with his ice chest to check on the cows a mile away.
My time has come and gone. I'm a relic of the past. I've never had an I Pod, my cell phone is strictly "hello". There is no texting or sending pics. If I answer I'm here if I don't the phone is either dead or I'm on the tractor and can't hear it. There is no programming the phone. It either works or it doesn't. Our first phone was on the wall with a hand crank and the operator answered after cranking the handle.
My great granddad rode with Jesse Chisholm pushing cows to Kansas. Jesse asked Cline to reclaim some horses that had been rustled on that drive. Maybe I inherited my love for the open range and animals honestly?
Accept life as it comes, change what you can if it isn't working for you, accept that which you can't change. Understand life is really short before this part is over. I promise with all my heart and soul, there is more after this. Take it from one who made that trip already.
all my love,
Barb
Comments
~giggle~
literally, butt deep in wet, green, pig manure growing up.
hours every day shoveling manure, scraping shavings and putting fresh in the pens for the pigs bedding twice daily feeding three times daily watering.
and if temperature was above freezing point of water, extra hours shoveling manure stacked 4 feet wide by 15 feet high, for the 75 foot length of the barn.
oddly pigs prefer to be clean,and are very gentle if not mistreated.
Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.
I've heard...
they make good pets (maybe some breeds are better for that than others?), and are more intelligent than dogs. Dogs and cats started their lives with us as working animals, so…
pets?
the miniature breeds maybe, but the food breeds we had, at 6 months age they had 200 pounds dressed weight of meat on them. 200 pounds after being slaughtered and cleaned. That is a bit big for a pet. :)
hard to put a pig to work, for anything other than rooting up a field, they just don't have the build for much work that we could use them for.
curious, gentle if well treated usually, very friendly and sociable, they do like being in groups. wild pigs tend to be more solitary as getting food is easier then, but they still tend to be in groupings fairly close together.
Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.
Pigs
I'll have to take you word for that ... we raised cattle for beef and grain/hay to feed them, the one time we tried to add pigs to the mix we almost lost a cousin to an extremely aggressive boar, and we did lose one of the dogs.
Pigs are omnivorous, highly intelligent, and extremely (surprisingly) durable animals, and if you do piss them off, only luck and divine intervention can be expected to save you ... all that meat is muscle tissue, powering teeth and jaws able to get through bone, legs able to outrun just about anything short of a motorcyle in the sprint and turn on a dime. The only fence that can hold them is either welded steel or heavy timber ... they'll go through 2*4 without breaking stride and won't even notice wire strands.
On the flip side, the thought of losing any pig over "shoat" size to coyote-predation is laughable ...
how they are treated is key
same with any animal.
but, even if not mistreated they can turn viscous on you, I was attacked by a full grown sow one day [ 1200 pounds ] and it was only quick thinking that got me OUT of the pen without injury.
our breeder boar was huge. 3/4 of ton of animal, nose tip to butt he was 9 feet long, stood 4 feet at his highest. I used to nap on is back, he would not move much, so I wouldn't fall and get hurt.
Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.
Well...
There was a good reason for the fact that in ancient times killing a boar with a spear during a boar hunt was considered a heroic act. "Pigs" can easily kill an unarmed human being.
These days, of course, the "heroic" hunters are armed with longguns and telescopic aiming devises almost powerful enough to "kill" a Bradley Fighting Vehicle from a hundred yards away. Thus sloth and random malice doth make cowards of us all. The only substantial danger on these bloodthirsty junkets is of being shot by a drunken fellow hunter.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Not at all
I guess you’re talking to me? Not at all offended, but it sounded in our conversation like my intentions were not understood, so I tried to be a little more clear. Sorry if I came across as defensive, I didn’t mean to do that, either.
I wish I’d been lucky enough to grow up with horses. Born and raised in the city, but I prefer being surrounded by life more than by concrete. I haven’t done too poorly for a city dweller on a fixed income, though. Though I’ve never been on a working ranch, I have worked with people who managed horses for a living. I worked with the horses toward a common purpose. I don’t know that we ever saved each other’s butts, but I had more of a relationship with them than what comes from pleasure riding. And I loved it.
Lindy?
I mentioned her because cutting is a rodeo event, just like calf roping is. (And both skills are essential on a traditional working cattle ranch.) Someone left a comment about rodeo tending to be macho and exclusive. My point was, if Lindy Burch could break into it, so could your character, Katrina. :3
It’s not. The old ways still live, in some parts. There are ranchers out there raising range-fed beef for the premium market, because there is no comparison to what gets fattened on a feed lot. And they do it in the old way…from horseback. I remember seeing a segment about this on the TV news some years ago. I haven’t searched the ’net, but I suspect there is some info out there on the subject.
When the fossil fuel bubble really bursts, I have a hunch there will not be a replacement source of cheap and abundant energy. (Nuclear power, the only viable alternative so far, is much too dangerous.) I expect that we will revert to an agrarian economy, once again, and that people like you who know the old ways will suddenly be in tremendous demand.
I never doubted it. I feel fortunate, though, to have the experiences I’ve had. Most people like me never manage to get anywhere near a horse, much less have the opportunity to study them and work with them. Though brief, I am grateful for my time with them. I live on the memories.
Too me, nothing quite like a
Too me, nothing quite like a good old fashioned real world and hard working "cow pony". One that can do the required and requested tasks, yet gentle to his/he rider and will stand with that rider if need be.
It is like the love between a dog and its master/mistress, yet with a larger sized animal. My favorite was a Roan that my Uncle had in his 20 head herd on his ranch, that my Aunt had named Cinderella and called Cindy for short. No show horse, just a plain old everyday working saddle horse. Learned to ride on her when I was 7 years old.
I too remember the days of a ringing phone, ON A 10 PARTY LINE; and my Granddad had a wall mounted hand crank phone in his kitchen. A "candlestick" phone sitting by her easy chair for my grandmother.
Tube radios in cars and actually kerosene lanterns for lighting in their house and barns. This was in the 1940s and 1950s in Northeastern Washington State. They lived on a ranch/farm started by my paternal Great grandfather back in the 1870s-80s. By the 1960s, they had "graduated" to electric lights, but never gave up the two phones. My Uncle with the horse ranch, stayed with the kerosene lanterns until mid 1980s. finally gave in to electricity as even my Granddad was after him to do so. My parents had a party line at various places we lived in in several states, as having a single person line WAS EXPENSIVE back in the day, and actually considered by some as being snobbish. You had a special ring or series of rings that identified your phone, and you NEVER knew who might be listening in, but pretty much most people were polite enough to not do that to others who used the same line. (this was in the 1950s and into the early 1960s. When I went off to Germany in 1962 in the AF; is when my parents finally got a single phone line put in their house. Us kids (4) were amazed that we actually had a single line just for our family to use. That was a big WOW, what will they think of next. Forgot to mention, on a party line system, if someone had a medical emergency 99.99% of the other folks, even ones on the line at the time, would give it over to the person who had the emergency going on. Plus if they lived close enough, you would soon find your self engulfed with neighbors coming to help if they could.
Take care and know "some of us oldies" are still out there with you. (Giggle) :)
Janice Lynn.
Our Neighbor Was Eaten
When I was small, I was constantly reminded by my mother of the man who had lived about three miles from us who was eaten by pigs. I don't know if he mistreated them. He probably did. That's the way things were done.
My uncle was severely bitten by a sow when he got between her and her offspring.
The worst that ever happened to me was to get a shock from an electric fence when I poured their skim milk into their trough over the top of the fence.
I had my run-ins with cows who thought I was a threat to their calves.
Farm animals can be very dangerous.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
They can, indeed.
They can indeed, and those are some fairly certain ways to provoke them. I listened closely to what my teachers told me about safety around horses, and practiced what they advised. The one time I didn’t, a mare chomped me a good one.
It is a delicate balance when dealing with animals that are faster, larger and more powerful than we are. I’ve never been bucked off a horse, nor has one tried to scrape me off by running under a low-hanging tree branch. I still have all my fingers, and my nose has not been bitten off, either. Somehow, I managed not to get kicked. I endeavored to conduct myself around horses so that they would not want to do these things to me. Mostly, I found it was possible to achieve with them a good balance of friendship and respect. Except for that one occasion, I managed to stay out of trouble with them. But I always remained mindful of and alert to how they were responding to me. Non-Verbal Communications 101, 3 units, transferable credit.
Pigs will eat anything.
As a child in the early 50s, when staying on my uncle's farm, it was my cousin's and my job to feed 100s of pigs twice daily. I well recall my uncle throwing dead chickens (not sure how they'd died) into the pigs where they were eaten. We were amused when the expelled air made it seem the poor birds were squawking.
I think perhaps the experience is part of the reason I've been a vegetarian for well over 30 years.
Robi
So will crops
Before synthetic fertilizers, there was manure, dead fish, and just about anything else a farmer could compost. Dead chickens too, no doubt.
well
it took 20 years after one incident before I would eat a drumstick or thigh from any poultry. [ you really don't want details ]
we grain fed our pigs, 210 pigs getting high protein sow pellets.
much leaner meat than slop fed would give, but a pretty expensive feed bill.
Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.
There is always a market...
There is always a market for premium quality foodstuffs: specialty grocers, high-end restaurants… I’ll never forget the article I saw on TV about ranchers who raise their beef cattle on the range in the old, traditional way for the premium market. I don’t know if “cage-free” poultry is raised to better than current industry standards, but just the idea of it appeals to the public. There is always a market for quality.
Pigs
We fed our pigs, usually just two of them, on table leftovers, discarded farm and garden produce, grain, feed pellets, dried sugar beet pulp and unused milk from our cows and goats. We cooked the slop in a big stainless steel pot and fed them twice a day. They grew amazingly fast, from ten pound piglets to 250 pound porkers in less than a year. The pigpen was arranged so we could separate the pigs and clean the pen while they were eating in a different part of it. Being out in the desert, we had shade for the pigs and water they could lie in if they wanted. The floor of the pen was part cement and part dirt but all covered in straw, except the pool part. The pen had a roof to keep out coyotes and bobcats.
Other people often had trouble with pigs getting sick, ours never did. Perhaps because we cooked their feed; Dad said they would get fat on cooked food faster, too.
Once, one of the smaller pigs got loose and Dad had to chase it down across the open desert. This was pretty funny to watch. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.