Between the heat and Sebastian there was not much sleep had last night. Seb got hiccups which lasted for ages. It sounded like the preliminaries to throwing up, so I popped him on his leash and took him outside where he ravenously consumed vast quantities of grass. This exercise was repeated several times, and the last time i looked at the clock it was almost 2 am. Strangely, no evidence of grass was to be found in his droppings this morning, or indeed all day, so no idea where it got to.

He eventually settled down and I gratefully turned to sleep but was awake by 5:30 with no hope of returning to the land of Nod. So I got up and snuck over to have a look at the pigs next door. The two newcomers, having been shunned by their paddock-mates, were fast asleep alongside the fence, looking very cute as they did their impression of the babes in the woods.

They are apparently parented by a sow who was a cross between a large white and a landrace pig, and the father was a Wessex Saddleback (it seems unlikely to me that such a rare breed would exist in Parattah but I am assured he does). The one on the right is the gilt and the one on the left is the boy. I am informed they will both be kept - him to impregnate one of the Large White gilts that they have, and she to be sent to a large white boar who apparently lives up the road.

I have to wonder if they realise that this may mean they have up to 20 pigs on the place at a time, when they are struggling to feed the four (soon to be five) horses they already have. In fact the horses seem to have been all but forgotten about - getting their food delivered and ignored for the rest of the day while he sits in a comfy chair in the run with the pigs and scratches their backs.

I have reminded him of the dangers of becoming too attached to pigs that one intends to eat......

He has finally connected the electric fencing to mains power, so there should be a sufficient charge in it to persuade even the most determined pigs to stay on the correct side of the wire. Fingers crossed.