Pigs @ MindSay 
police
I love cows. They're so docile and trusting.They eat, sleep, rear young and never complain or ask for anything.You see a little rough and tumble between calves, but generally they are peaceful and kind.
Well geese , now they're a whole different ballgame.They are easy to agitate and very vocal about it. They chase you down and bite your butt in a heartbeat. They even get annoyed with each other frequently.Their quite demanding and though they flock " together" I think it's all about safety. They take care of their babies and waddle around squawking all day till they get tired. Then then tuck their head under their wing and sleep until they're rested then they wake up and start all over again!
Turkeys, well they're just stupid. Range turkeys are pissed off at the world and turkeys raised in houses are clueless. They like to grab your shoelaces because they think they have found a "white worm" that must be eaten. They live to eat.....and to freak out. They'll spook in a heart beat and crowd to the end of the turkey house until they suffocate one another.I think it's living in those unnatural houses that makes them so nuts. They never seem to learn anything!
Wild turkeys are beautiful and majestic. In fact the turkey was almost our national bird instead of the eagle.
Now dogs, they're much like humans.They vary in their personalities. Some are sweet and gentle, trusting and loyal. You can let them out in the yard and find them laying under a tree a few hours later. They want to curl up in your lap or by your side because their favorite place is with you.
But, others are angry, always looking for a fight.Let them out and they're gone with the wind.They keep to themselves and don't care if you ever show them any affection.
Dogs seem to display every emotion we have. Love, hate, pride, envy, jealousy,anger.
I can't imagine a world without dogs.
Now pigs....pigs suck.
I'm a goose. What are you?
Gosh, you would think I would learn after
a while.
OK folks this is a serious thing - Factory farming -
this is something we should all be aware of. I don't particularly like animals, I don't have pets like cats and dogs etc but I don't mind eating animals, I'm carnivorous. I do mind it when they are treated badly. I've seen TV shows about abbatoires and I truly believe those people care about their work and do everything they can to be quick and painless. Farming methods are different. The methods used today in factory farming, can be quite barbaric and we just don't get the information about it. Here in Canberra, we're banning battery-cage chicken farming but there's more to do.
Our farming methods are becoming ever more like those in the U.S. because of the commercial element of farming. It's getting harder to make a buck as a farmer but they have to have limits, there must be a line we simply don't cross. There must be a line that says "we just don't do this to other creatures, no matter what."
Folks, the environment is important and we're trying to change our methods in order to help the place we live in. It's time we made the same effort to change the way the animals we depend on, live. Cruelty is never OK, keeping an animal confined in a space, too small to turn around in, is never OK. Keeping them away from sunlight is never OK and there are many more things we need to change.
Take a look:
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs
(And unless you have been a vegan your entire life, I don’t want to hear any whining)
Many problems are caused when non native species get loose in the wild. The bird population in Australia has been decimated by feral cats, the American Lobster is destroying the Scandinavian coast line and here in the US we are host to an estimated 50,000 invasive species. Of course some of these uninvited guests are worse than others. One of the more prolific and destructive of invasive animals in our area is feral hogs. This problem started when domesticated pigs were turned loose to forage in the wild, as well as, when a few escaped pigs formed breeding colonies in wild areas. The feral hogs, which can grow up to 1,200 pounds, are extensively damaging to the local eco-system. Their omnivorous diet, aggressive behavior and their feeding method of rooting in the ground all combine to severely alter ecosystems unused to pigs. Pigs will even eat small animals and destroy nests of ground nesting birds. The Invasive Species Specialist Group lists feral pigs on the list of the world's 100 worst invasive species and says about them: “Feral pigs like other introduced mammals are major drivers of extinction and ecosystem change. They have been introduced into many parts of the world, and will damage crops and home gardens as well as potentially spreading disease. They uproot large areas of land, eliminating native vegetation and spreading weeds. This results in habitat alteration, a change in plant succession and composition and a decrease in native fauna dependent on the original habitat.”
That being said, we can move on to the story.
Here at the local State park there has been an outbreak of feral pigs. And during the past winter the park management was able to capture quite a few of the wild pigs and destroy them. In the process of the wild hog round up, they caught three baby pigs. In a wave of compassion the decision was made to spare the little piglets the pain of starving to death without their mothers, so the baby pigs were placed in a large pen, where they were bottle fed until they were big enough to eat solid food. The baby pigs grew rapidly and were soon consuming up to 50 pounds of corn a day. Well with that much corn going in one end, something had to be coming out the other and that stuff coming out of the backside put together with all of the rain we wear having this spring, combined to make a large stinking mud hole just out side the back door of the person taking care of the piglets. As the flies grew worse and worse, a power struggle ensued in the household, as to who’s job it should be to clean out the pig pen and then dispatch the piglets, which were still pretty cute, but were getting larger, more aggressive and smellier. The result ended up being that nobody cleaned the pen and the piglets were just tuned loose. For a while just letting roam free seemed to have solved the problem. They would wander around the area, foraging for food, lying in shade and come “home” in the evenings for supper and to frolic in the lawn sprinklers. They were still skittish and wild, but it was pretty cute when they would come up and beg for food. Their favorite piggy treat being cheetos, of course. It seemed like the perfect happy ending. But that was really just the beginning of the problems. As the piglets grew larger, they became also more inquisitive and began traveling farther and farther from the house. Until they roamed far enough, that they found that the best place for a little extra food, was not at their house, but at the picnic area of the park. There they gorged themselves on half eaten sandwiches, oreo cookies, and other detritus found in a typical picnic area. While some of the park patrons found this highly entertaining, it was definitely a problem. The pigs were becoming more aggressive and less fearful of people, which in turn was starting to scare the hell out of the visitors to the park. The situation was a bad deal all the way around. While for the time being the pigs were not particularly dangerous, as they grew that situation would change for the worse. The decision was made to kill the pigs, before they became a real danger.
That’s where I came in. I thought since the pigs were going to die, it would be a real shame to waste the meat. So I volunteered to take care of the problem pigs. The pigs were captured and lured into a large dog carrier. After that, I loaded the pigs into the back of my Jeep and hauled them out to the farm. (We decided that the State Park would probably not be the best place to butcher a bunch of hogs) Once at the farm I was joined by a co-worker, who is excellent at handling meat and we prepared an area to deal with the pigs. Once the area was prepared, we removed the first piglet from the cage. I quickly shut the cage door and grabbed the hind legs of the pig as my co-worker (Beto) held on tightly to the pigs ears. After I got a firm grasp on the pig Beto took hold of the pig’s front legs and we heaved it onto a metal work table. We positioned the pig on its side and I pinned its hind legs with one hand and with the other hand locked its left front leg onto its back. While I wrestled to muddy, little piglet to the table Beto inserted a long knife into the pigs exposed heart. The pig’s death came quickly. Of course it felt like hours, as I held the piglet close and its life ebbed away. As the pig expired, I said a few comforting words of thanks to the animal that was giving its life, so that we may eat. I then placed some tobacco in its mouth, as we moved on to the two other pigs. After repeating this process a couple more times, it was time to actually butcher the animals. I held the pigs up as Beto tied one of their hind legs to a mesquite branch. We then proceeded to skin and gut the pigs as they hung swinging from the mesquite tree.
This brings me to another point that I would like to make. I think that anyone who decides to eat meat, should be willing to butcher their own animals. I feel that you develop a much greater understanding what it takes to consume this resource, when you reach inside an animal with bare hands and pull its still warm guts out and onto the ground. In today’s day and age, too many people seem to think that meat just appears in the refrigerated cases on Styrofoam trays at their local big box store. I think that if a person can not face the reality of just exactly where meat comes from, then they have no business at all eating meat.
Now my freezer is full of chops, cutlets, roasts, and ribs. Some of which I’ll thaw out and cook for my birthday party on Sunday. Let me know if you can make it over and I’ll set out an extra rack of ribs for you.
Before I unviel the new addition to our zoo, I would like to show you all updated pictures of our family's zoo! These fur babies are the old residents.
1. Is Tweek and Tweeter the Birds. We adopted these lil snots down in OK. Actually we got them from a pet store in Liberal KS. Most parakeets like to be handled but these two do NOT. So we do a lot of talking to them and swapping out toys for them.
2. These two boys here are the Guine Pigs. Eyeore and Piglet were the first new additions to our zoo of cats and birds right after we moved back. We adopted them from the Humane Society when we went to go look at dogs when we got back home. They are what we fondly call the "Fat Boys"! They think they need to be feed all day long! Again they do NOT like to be handled much, so twice a week we get them out of their cage and handle them either on the floor or on the coaches. Otherwise we just sit down next to the cage and pet them and they really don't like that either. I think it is because they were 2 years old when we got htem and the previous family didn't handle them much.
3. This is my Bitch Kitty aka Shadow. She has been with the family since she was a 6 week old kitten and she is now about 7-8 years old. She has made tenitive peace w/ Randy and now only growls and attacks him when she is in a pissy mood in the mornings. She is suppose to be my daughter's cat but she only claims her at night during the day she is more my cat.
4. This next fur baby is our new kitty addation. Cinnamon aka Sin Kitty. Sin is about 4-5 months old and still very much a kitten. We adopted him from a co-worker of mine. My co-worker's family took in Sin and his brother Spice when they were new born kittens left outside to die in the winter. They didn't want to keep 2 male tom kitties so I said I would take him. He is quite the pistol! Tweek and Tweeter aren't to thrilled with him because he hasn't learned that their bird cage is NOT a jungle gym and he can't jump from the sterio speaker by the TV on to their cage and just swing!
5. This next lil furry baby is my Smokey. Smokey is the kitten that adopted us by coming up through the duct work down in OK not once but twice! She is about 8-9 months old now and is officially my crabby prego cat. Ever since she got knocked up after out catting around for a week, she has decieded she is going to be a lil crab ass! She attacks Coltin, my boy and Randy on sight now; will not have anything to do with Socks or Sin anymore. And I have to throw her outside to settle her crabby ass down. She is still primarly my kitty.
6. And then we have Fat Man aka Socks. He is the old man of the bunch at 13 years old. He weighs a whopping 30 lbs and yes we do monitor his food intake and the kittens forced him into his 3rd kitty hood so he gets plenty of exersie. He is my 1st dog as Randy says because he comes to my whistle and follows me around the house like a dog does!
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