Went to Country Max Sunday. My daughter used to work there and knows everyone, and she always sorts out their pigs for them. (Pet shops and the like are NOTORIOUS for selling very young pregnant pigs because no one knows how to sex them!)

She checked the two "girls" and yeah, they were fine. While she was checking them I was watching two Abys in the "boys" cage. A lean one was chasing after a chubbier one, purring and waggling, while the chubbier one made evasive moves and typical annoyed sow noises. "Check that one," I told her, pointing. "I swear it's a sow."

She picked it up. "This is the one they had in with the girls but I checked it and put it in with the boys." She upended it for me.

"That's a girl," I said.

"What about the...thingy?"

I looked again. It DID have a rather large "thingy" but the rest of the anatomy was definitely female. "You're right," I said. "It DOES. It's got both--it's a hermaphrodite."

First time either of us had seen one. We told the manager. "I can't guarantee it won't get pregnant, but I suspect it's sterile. Especially since it hasn't gotten pregnant yet," I told him.  "But whatever it is, it definitely thinks it's a girl."

He decided they'd call it "Pat" after the Saturday Night Live character whose gender no one could determine.

So I'm innocently eating lunch at my desk in the caviary. DH is out walking our grandpuppy we are babysitting, a half-grown Doberman.

Just now, DH comes in with the dog, turning him loose. Dog apparently suprised the cat, who was doing whatever in the laundry room by the back door. Dog lunges, cat screams and runs into kitchen, dog in hot pursuit. Cat leaps onto the counter; dirty breakfast frying pans and silverware clatter to the floor, probably beaning the dog, who has to skid to a stop by the caviary door.

Cat leaps from counter over the gate, into the caviary (where he's not allowed), stampeding the poor piggies who more freaked by the clattering cutlery than a cat dashing by. Cat spies me and continues running, out the other caviary door and up the stairs (where he's also not allowed.) I drop lunch, run around the desk and manage to partially gate the stairs while I run screaming up the stairs after the cat. Dog knocks aside the gate and runs up the stairs (I think DH was trailing this parade, yelling obscenities or whatever).

Just as I nab the cat, dog barges in and cat is snarling and spitting in my arms, trying to hook the dog. I manage somehow to kick the dog's ass down the stairs where DH nabs the leash the dog has been dragging. I'm still carrying yowling, spitting cat and I toss him over the gate as I again gate the stairs and caviary. (You can get to the stairs from the caviary but not into the caviary, without crossing a gate.)

Cat lands near dog, whom DH is trying to shove into a crate near the stairway. Dog breaks away and chases cat who runs onto the wood stove (good thing it was nearly out), then makes a mad dash past the dog, who is finally caught by DH and shoved into his crate. Meanwhile I and the cat head for the bathroom...

...where I had left both toilet seat and lid up after scrubbing the toilet with cleanser just before lunch. As I get to the bathroom, the cat flies out of the toilet where he'd leaped without realizing the seat was up, spattering me with cleanser, which I was NOT happy about. He ran out and I think ended up back in the laundry room I cleaned mopped up the bathroom, now a lot cleaner than I thought I'd had time for.

And then I ate my now-soggy salad.

Yeah, uh-huh,  I feel less stressed.

We did pretty well. Got BOS with a partially-chewed Texel I only brought to pad the entry, LOL. I'm glad because he has two legs already and once he got barbered I figured that was it for his show career. I THINK that was a third leg.

BOB went to a little TSW sow I bred, who now lives in Ontario with ther new owner. Pretty cool!

In Teddies we didn't do anything exciting. My best sow who has been winning was too preg to show and my boar came in 2nd. I had a bunch of barely-juniors entered for lack of anything better to show and my cream roan boar won best junior so that's kind of cool. The judge called him "very promising." We'll see. I'm not crazy about cream roan but his roaning is very even and I can use that.

Lori Rogers of Big R Piggery has the cutest red roan sow with a freckled face that she NEEDS to give me!! She went BOS in Teddies.

Sold all my for sale pigs for now. I have one litter almost ready I need to put on my For Sale page, and maybe a sow or two I'll cull also.

I SO didn't want to drag my ass out to buy bedding today. I bought two bags of shavings at the show. So today I told myself, "Self, if you promise to buy wood pellets, I'll treat you to an ice cream cone." So I had the cone and headed for WalMart. Wally world has them for $5.39 a bag, compared to $5.99 at TSC and another store. I found a close parking spot, went in the "outdoor" section door, grabbed a flat cart, loaded up 10 bags, and paid at the checkout. Relatively painless, really. Checkout chick asked me if I needed a guy to unload them for me.

I said "well, I got them all on the damn cart by myself."

She said "well I'll call someone."

I said "fine, if he gets outside before I'm done loading them all, he can do the rest."

Needless to say I got them all in the cart and the cart returned and saw nary a soul. Then I went to the grocery store and blew $200 bucks but I "saved $30 today and get 50 cents off my gas." Then I unloaded it all and put it all away myself too. Ugh. Bedtime!

Made some more cull decisions. I have quite a few babies left to place, and then I'll be deciding on some of the sows. I've pretty much culled all the boars for now. My new boar Cashew is growing like a weed. His coat is super thick and kinky like his dad's. Too bad he's a broken roan, but since his dad is TSW, well, we're halfway to all roan, LOL.

Seriously I doubt I'll ever see the end of the dreaded white spotting gene in my lifetime, but I couldn't find really good roans to start with, I had to take what I could find to start with, which was a so-so roan and a couple really nice brokens. So yeah I get too many blotchies, but overall I think we're doing OK.

Still working towards a good showable brindle though. I showed the brindle Chicory when she was a tot. The judges seemed to think her brindling was OK, but DQ'd her for the tiniest spot of white on one foot. Well her dad, Dosh, is the closest I've gotten to a good brindle but had a white blaze. When his coat turned out nice, I just HAD to keep him. He's sired some nice pigs since then and not all are mismarked. I still say there's some genetic tie between excellent coats and mismarks, LOL.

I've updated my Web site with a bunch of new Texel boars for sale. They are red and white; one has pink eyes. Hard to tell on curl right now; mine tend to grow spirals and the curls aren't real pronounced at first. The one with the so-so distribution looks the most promising of course. The one whose markings I really like probably will be straight down the back and shoulders. This is my last Texel litter until spring and I have nothing to show right now; everyone is either chewed or senior and matting.

I went through the tots and juniors and decided who to keep for now and who to show. The little cream roan boar in the boys cage is going to a show this Saturday. Unfortunate color, but his coat seems to be coming in nice and thick and even.

I checked out the dalmatian-y tri roan in the same cage and couldn't decide whether to keep him. He has a sort of piebald face I love, but those spots... His coat is not quite as thick as the cream's. So I looked them up and they are littermates to each other and the roan keeper in the girls cage. So he's going. I don't think you can show a dalmatian with three colors, otherwise he'd be pretty decent. Maybe he'd work out in a dal program because I think he'd throw black and white as well as tris. And his sire has ticked me off for producing spots, but he's already gone.

Fortunately this litter's mom was a really nice roan, so the sow isnt too spotty and the cream had great roaning as a newborn, not that you'll ever be able to see it very well :-(

I'll have to get tri dalmatian's pix on my for sale page, but I thnk I'm gonna wholesale him if he isnt sold by Saturday. I also have a broken senior sow and a (pix not up yet) brindle sow with mostly black. I just made that decision today. I doubt the wholesaler would want her, so she'll be up for awhile.

I also have a 3-week old Teddy litter, but I don't like to let them go until four weeks and they are probably too small to wholesale anyway, so I haven't bothered to give them a good look for possible keepers. I have no idea about coat at this point but kink and density looks decent overall.

THE FEUD

My day wasn't going the best anyway and I suddenly heard a commotion in the closest top cage. Turns out mom and son were fighting! I mean she laid into him and he didn't back off. When I came up and shooed them they separated briefly, teeth chattering and circling, but I managed to grab the little boar who fled when I reched in. I nabbed him avoiding his teeth end but he didn't attempt to bite and had to be calmed; he seemed a bit traumatized.

Well I don't want to add him to either junior boar cage as he'd be odd man out and they're already crowded. So into the ex pen with him and mom. She ran into the hut and he went around sniffing and by day's end they were OK again. I'm just hoping he holds off impregnating his mom until I get him in his own or another boar cage. I haven't seen him mount yet but he purrs and waggles like crazy and I'm sure that's what ticked her off, LOL.

So most of The Shire babies have arrived for this year. I have only two sows in breeding, the red roans Posy and her daughter Primula, two of my best sows. Prim recently won a couple BOBs. One of them is in with Chess and the other is in with Podge I think.

Those four I have trouble with. I should paint their ear numbers on their behinds, LOL, so I dont have to squint at ears. Posy and Prim are mother and daughter. One has a blaze so you'd think it'd be easy to tell them apart but I always forget who has the blaze and have to turn to my Web site!

Begbie and Podge are father and son. Yes, their markings are different enough I can tell them apart, but again, I forget who's who! CRS disease bigtime!! Those two and Chess have really nice coats and Begbie and Podge are big besides.

Then there's the little, um, rape victim, LOL. The self red sow was stupidly put by me into the junior boars' cage and I didn't notice til I heard her screaming. She's old enough that the breeding isn't unduly risky, and the boar is the oldest one, he has a really good coat but is a roaned red broken, so not my ideal choice of colors to put together. In fact I was hoping for an excuse to sell him, but his coat is just too nice and his conformation is good too, and he's out of some of my best pigs. I'll breed him a few times and see what he produces before I place him.

The other boars in that cage are all showable colors and I'm waiting to see how their coats turn out. Then I'll keep and show the best.

The next show coming up is Fulton, NY. I have bunch of baby Texel boars to find homes for, and maybe some Teddies--gotta check who's ready to wean.

The Shire's Petal Delver had five new babies yesterday. She's always lived with her sister Prissa, so I breed them to the same boar. Prissa is due anytime.

Of the five, four appear to be showable colors/patterns. I haven't examined them thoroughly for belly roaning or small white marks, etc. Two are tri-roans, one appears to be a buff (brassy cream) roan and  two are red. One of the reds has a white blaze like his mismarked dad. The self red and the cream have really pretty faces and large eyes. Their mom is an especially pretty pig.

Petal and Prissa have nice dense coats but they lack kink/resiliency on their sides, so I only showed them a couple times. The Shire's Dosh Durry, the sire, is a brindle with a white blaze. He has better resiliency but I wish he had better kink. My more recent pigs are having more kink, so we're getting there.

It was so cute: Prissa helped clean off the babies. When I checked on them last night before I went to bed, the two reds were cuddled with Prissa and the other three with Petal, in the opposite corner of the cage. It was chilly last night.

This morning they all seemed to find Petal in time for breakfast, LOL.

While I was cleaning, a baby kept wheeking piteously so I finally went to investigate and a little red baby was all alone on one side of the cage while everyone as on the other side. Probably seemed like desolation for miles around him. I scooped him up and stuck him in the pile under Petal and it's been quiet ever since.

Oh--here's one that'll stop your heart for a second. The sight of a well-chewed tomato in a cage of newborns! LOL.

I have several sows pregnant and its about time to separate them from the boars til next year. I don't breed in the winter because I don't go anywhere and have no means to sell pigs, unless I run an ad which usually brings less-than-ideal pig buyers IME.

Brody (Texel) is going up for sale soon, and a junior sow who barbered herself (I've had enough of that, thank you) so I can't even tell how her coat would have turned out. Brody has two sows pregnant so I can spare him. He has good curl but nothing else about him excites me, and my basic feeling about a pig is usually pretty accurate.

Of the Teddies, I have two junior boys I have to decide about. One is the panda-pig--I don't care for brokens and if his coat doesn't turn out terrific, he'll be going. Ditto the broken with the red roan patches. Yes, if there was a category for broken roans I could probably get up a decent entry, ugh. Well that's what you get when you want to do roans but the only decent pigs you can get ahold of are brokens.

On a positive note, I've done some pedigrees this past week, little by little. I still have to do weights and tag a few, and there's Web work waiting--my own or the stuff I do gratis. That's why it's waiting!

I did veggies all morning, and now it's off to do some housecleaning since outside work is shot.

A piggy breeder who got most of her stock from me, wrote me about a red-eyed white baby who seemed blind. At my urging, she checked him out thoroughly and he is also deaf and missing teeth-- a typical "lethal" roan that occurrs in 25 percent of babies born to roan x roan breedings.

Because the roan gene is dominant and what you see is what you get-- if a pig is roaned, it carries the roan gene heterozygously, that is: Rn rn. If it is not a roan, it is rn rn, and lethals are dominany homozygous, or Rn Rn. What we call a lethal is a white pig who is usually blind, deaf, has missing or misaligned teeth, and may have internal problems as well. They rarely live to adulthood and are usually sterile anyway. Most roan breeders try to avoid breeding roan x roan for this reason, or euthanize these babies at birth. Because the roan gene is dominant, there can be no non-roan "carriers."

That said, it's not so simple. I had a dark-eyed white boar who, when bred to a roan sow, produced a lethal. A thorough physical check of the boar showed a couple black hairs-- he was a "silent" roan, or a roan with so few colored hairs that he appeared white.

The parents of the lethal I mentioned in the beginning are not roans either. The mother is a mostly-black brindle, out of two other brindles, "I" and "B". "I" 's maternal side has roans.

The father of the lethal is a -- suprise-- tortoiseshell and white, also sired by "B" and his dam is a self black out of no-roan lines. We'll set her aside.

Of the father's parents, "B" is a mostly black brindle who was sired by a line of TSWs. His mother is a patchy red roan. The father does have some intermingling of red and black hairs on his rump patch.

OK, go figure. The pigs' owner swears there's no one but this father who could have sired this litter. In fact he was the only boar she owned at the time. If this is true, he must be a genetic roan, right?

Insight invited!!

I gave a couple Texels a bath last week and used a detangler on them. It seemed to work well on the bottom of their rear sweeps. The shampoo cleaned off the sticky urine that seems to cause a lot of the matting, and the detangler changing the texture enough so they didn't seem to get sticky/dirty as fast. However, it tended to weigh down and straighten the hair along the spine, so I washed them again this morning, sans detangler and they seemed a bit curlier again. Let's hope they can refrain from peeing on their sweeps before Saturday. But for inbetween shows, I'm using the detangler. I really think they matted less often or not as badly after I applied it.

I still have to decide which adults I'm bringing for sale, besides the reserved pigs.

<Edit>Oh, and for the raffle I might bring the full series of Harry Potter books, or "Twilight" series, or both. Wonder if anyone would be interested. I don't forsee getting a chance to actually shop for stuff.