I have five daughters and they helped me with hog chores until they went off to college, especially after farrowing, when they helped keep the two-pen farrowing coops cleaned. I would scoop out the dirt bedding while one opened and closed the door to keep the piglets in and the sows out. The other daughters would come along, putting in straw, spreading it around and putting in pans of feed for the piglets.
When piglets squeal, it really sets their mothers off. They’d go after anyone around, woofing and biting, trying to protect their piglets. When there were 10-20 of these sows in a lot, this could be quite perilous. My daughters, as outside farm girls, knew how to take care of themselves and could really move at times.
That said, nothing is more thrilling than when you are inside, cleaning a 6-by-6-foot pen, and somehow the sow gets the latch unhooked, the door falls open and a 350-pound sow gets in, wanting a chunk of you. No valor here.
When my eldest daughter, Anne, was back from college during Christmas vacation, they were all out helping with the pigs. I was starting to scrape out a pen with all the coop doors shut when the sows really took off woofing. “The sows have Anne down!” Karen yelled.
I raised up and opened the top door on the coops. The first thing I saw was Karen and Sara perched on the ridge row of the coop. Carol and Kathy had hopped over the fence into the space where we threw the dead piglets and afterbirth.
With the scoop shovel, I jumped out of the coop, ran over and stood over Anne, who was curled up on the ground, screaming, with the sows all around, really woofing and carrying on. I started swatting sows with the scoop shovel. This did not have much effect on them.
I shouted at Anne to shut up. When she did, the sows just walked off. That is what kind of temperament sows have. They were hungry and went back to the feeder. I helped Anne up and asked if they’d bitten her. She said no. But she had a lot of slobber all over her and said they had halitosis and needed their teeth cleaned.
So, back to cleaning coops we went. After that, I teased my daughters about how they saved their sister. Either you got on top of the coop or over the fence with the dead pigs, then looked back to see if anything was left of your sister! FC
Richard Stout lives in Washington, Iowa. He is assisted in his writing endeavors by his granddaughter, Ashley Stout.
