Long Time No Post ..... and there is a LOT to catch up on!

After a break of two months during which I had no incomings, things got busy - little did I know JUST how busy it was about to get...

Chalk and Cheese

On Nov 29th, the rescue rang me to say that two babies had been found curled up by a fence, next to their dead mother. So, off I went to collect them.

And so Chalk; 65gms and Cheese; 72gms arrived. I estimated that they were about 3 weeks old. These two little ones were dehydrated and starving but even worse, they were fly blown. However luckily they'd been rescued before the fly eggs hatched. A friend and I spent 2-3 hours plucking the fly eggs off them - they were even in their eyes!

Chalk being a big scary, huffy hoglet!

Right from the beginning, these two had very distinct personalities with Cheese being placid and calm whilst Chalk was a prickly bundle of huffy, defensive spikiness.
As I was syringe feeding Chalk on admission she was jumping, spiking and huffing like a grown up hoggie, LOL. Cheese simply took the electrolytes and went to sleep.

Hence their names. You simply couldn't find two hogs more different in personality.







These two wee girl's journey to adulthood has been uncomplicated and fun to watch. On day 22 they moved outside into a hutch and on day 34 they were into a pen. A week later I split them up as Chalk was being bullied out of the nest box by Cheese.

Since then I've been waiting, waiting, waiting, WAITING for them to go completely nocturnal. Chalk and Cheese imprinted very strongly on me in spite of me keeping my contact with them to the absolute minimum. Since going into their pens they've been coming out for a walk about every morning at around 10am. After talking to Narelle we reckoned they were being woken by me cleaning the hutches and pens out earlier in the morning and were coming out to say 'Hi' to mum! So, I have stopped following any form of routine in 'hog alley' and only open their pens after dark to clean them out and put in their food. This approach seems to be working thank goodness! Tonight - after a VERY exciting and stressful day I will be releasing Chalk a few days earlier than planned as I am now desperate for her pen .... more on that in a later post ...

Chalk on Dec 25th

Chalk on the day of her release - Jan 25th