Bohemian Antiks Continue

Llama Drama Ding Dong

Where I describe the sex lives of my various animals. Please note: adult content to follow. Kind of.

What do you know about sex? Far more than you did if you spend a few days down on the farm. If your children don't know the facts of life, then when confronted with a humping chicken, then they will soon figure it out.

Do you know the peculiar circular dance of a rooster tipping his wings to a lady hen?

Or the way a sheep looks when they put on their game face?

Or the way Goat suddenly becomes Mistress Houdini when she is on heat, managing to escape from the farm and journey far and wide looking for that elusive mate. Luckily we now have a solution to that. A solution in the form of a boyfriend for her. But not a goat.

All the grazers go on heat intermittently through the winter and spring, which lead in the past to all sorts of shenanigans. One of which was a stray Cameroonian sheep (a meat breed) which just turned up one day and broke into the paddock.

A little research about the breed lead to some curious findings. The Cameroonian sheep is a well-known kidnapper. They will break off from their herd, go and find some lady sheep and then basically herd them back to their ranch. We were lucky to realise this. At that point our herd would come on regular walks with us in the forest in the winter, to find fresh grazing. But the Cameroonian would have just spirited them away. From that point on, everyone was paddock bound.

We sought out the owner of the Cameroonian, but nobody came forward. We put him outside the paddock so that he could go back home. He did not. In the end, after a few months with us, he died. We are not sure why, but the most likely explanations was that he ate too much hay.

One day a local farmer offered us a curious beast to add to our flock. He was an accident. An accident that had happened because nobody expected a tiny - four foot - alpaca male to breed with a giant -seven foot - llama. Our crossbreed was the result. He came to live with us when he was six months old. First of all his mother came to stay as well, to settle him in, and the grazers were terrified of her. But he fitted in fine, and because he was far less scary than his mum, was soon accepted as one of the gang.

But that was before he got to sexual maturity. These days the grazers still all hang out together, all or different species together, but when one of the girls goes on heat, our boy is there to step up and give them the attention that they want. Unfortunately for them all, and fortunately for us, they are genetically incompatible, so the herd size has remained almost static. Also, sheep and goats have sex standing up, and alpaca llamas have sex lying down. And it can take up to an hour. So even if everyone involved is very definitely up for it, they are all very confused by the entire endeavor. Anyway, there is a lot of cuddling. And everyone seems satisfied, and they have stopped running away to look for a breeding partner. Unlike Pig this spring.

Pig. Oh sweet pig, with her hard head and determined nature (yes - pig headed is exactly the right saying). What worries she caused. As soon as she reached breeding maturity, goodness didn't we just know about it. Not content with mooning about the garden making the oddest noises, she busted out of our fences and went on a rampage. She was gone for hours. I thought we had lost her forever, but she came back a day later covered in mud. We quickly found a vet who was prepared to do the spaying operation, and got hold of the piggy equivalent of the morning after pill.

Mature pigs go on heat every twenty one days, and like clockwork, three weeks later she'd escaped again. This time we knew a little more what to expect. There was no point in trying to contain her as pigs are renowned for being able to bust through concrete when they want something badly enough. This time she was gone overnight, but the siren call of a bowl of porridge the next morning brought her home again. I found her waiting for breakfast to be served in the neighbour's outhouse. But she looked grim. She was covered from head to toe in cuts and lacerations. Some of them really quite deep. I took her home and gave her her breakfast, wondering how long it would take her to recover from such terrible injuries.

She had been gored by wild boar. Poor Pig did not have any tusks to defend herself. I wondered what had gone down. Had she tried to join a local gang and been hazed by them? Was this some kind of initiation ceremony? After all, the wild boar are a very secret society. She flopped down in her basket and rested for an hour. Well, at least that will put her off escaping into the valley, I thought. With absolutely no consideration for how strong is the urge to reproduce. An hour later she wanted to go outside, and immediately she ran away again.

Many of the dozens of injuries healed up over the next week without issue, all apart from two particularly deep gorings. In the end I had to get the vet to come out and look. He said it was not possible to do the operation to spay her until her injuries were healed and I wondered if we would be stuck in a permanent loop of heat, injury, anti-conception injections and healing times. Thankfully she healed in time for the vet to come round, pop her up on the kitchen island and do the operation before our very eyes. We learned that you should really spay your pig when she is very small, and not wait until she is mature.

So there you go. Entirely too much information about the sex lives of farm animals. You live and learn, hey.