Last of the pork

Today we collect the gammon, the last meat from this years pigs. Hopefully it will look and taste good, as at least a couple of joints are ear marked for Christmas, both for us and as part of a Christmas meat parcel. I do feel slightly guilty having all the processing and packing done for us by the local butcher, but for now it suits us best and maybe in the future we will do more ourselves.
We timed the pigs departure just right, the recent heavy rains have turned their pen into a quagmire. If they were still with us we would certainly have needed to move them onto fresh ground.
The remaining livestock are coping well with the weather. All of them have places to shelter from the wind and rain and other than the turkeys make full use of it. Turkeys have absolutely no sense at all, rather than shelter from the elements they just stand in the centre of the paddock seemingly bemused as to why they are getting soaked through. So during the worst of the weather we keep them in indoors.
As the ground is free draining we have little mud, other than in the pig pen. It is getting slightly sticky in the gateways and around the nest box area of the hen house but thankfully that's all.

We still have Fred. He was supposed to go soon after Alfie...but.....

He is growing! !

We don't know if it is
1: Because he is getting more nutrition now that he is on hay and a little amount of concentrate and with his undershot jaw can cope with this diet better than grass.
Or..
2: If he did have coccidiosis, as was suggested by a couple of local sheep farmers, the time he was scouring, that his gut has now started to mend and his nutritional intake is improving.

Either way we shall now give him a couple of months before making a decision. If it's due to his undershot jaw he will have to go, as next summer he will only go down hill again unless he is always given additional feed.
If his weight loss was due to damaged intestines that are now repairing themselves, he has more of a future, all be it a pet one, either with us or someone else.