Get your foot out of the trough!

I am still amazed at how many expressions found in conversational English are derived from the farmyard.  Examples include pecking order, rule the roost, hen-pecked, greedy as a pig, etc.   One expression I heard growing up was “Get your foot out of the trough!”  Typically this was used to call out some vulgar eating habits.   

So speaking of troughs and pigs, I felt it was time to build the pigs a new trough.  Initially the pigs had two shallow wooden troughs the size of a typical drawer.  These worked for a while but now they are nosed all around the run and it became a frustrating matter of hunting the trough at feeding time.  Walking through the pig run carrying food can be a dangerous experience – the pigs like to nibble on extremities such as boots, jacket, pants, etc.  At best, the pigs’ snouts splatter you in mud so you end up looking like you were a front row spectator at a mud wrasslin’ event.  At worst, the pigs might connect with a sensitive appendage.  I haven’t done the research but I am confident that pig farmers prefer briefs over boxers.

Minimizing injury and to speed up the feeding process the pigs were graduated to a large galvanized steel tub.  This did not work too well.  The pigs hard time reaching the bottom.  When a pig would step into it the whole thing would go arse-over-tit smacking the pig in the face sending the food all over the place making it look like a pig sty.  It was clearly time to build a real trough.

Staying with a traditional “V” shape design, a simple 12 foot x 12 inch x 2 inch plank of untreated wood was purchased at Lowes which they very nicely cut it into two 4 foot pieces and two 2 foot pieces.  At the checkout I got a hard stare when presenting 1 bar code for 4 pieces of wood.  This has given me some ideas.  All that was left to do was screw the two 4 foot pieces together in a “V” using 3 inch galvanized wood screws and then adding on the 2 ends so that the “V” was held a couple of inches off the ground.  The whole thing cost around $12 and took about 5 minutes to assemble (assuming you had the foresight to charge up the drill).

The trough was the perfect size so that four pigs could line up next to each other in an orderly fashion and chomp away.  Yeah, right!  The photos below show what actually happened - some interesting defensive eating tactics.

The first pic shows a foot in the trough maneuver by Hambone (left) is countered by two front feet and a left cheek by Thing 1 (right).

The next pic shows the progression of Thing 1's technique resulting in complete trough domination.

The trough worked well with the only annoyance being the pigs occasionally push it over (it is much heavier than one would think and has a low center of gravity).  One improvement on the next one will be to add another wall so instead of a “V” it will look like a “W” without the last “/”.  This will mean that if the pigs nose it upside down it will be useable from the other side too.  Until then it means donning a pair of Kevlar briefs and weaving through hungry pigs to right the trough.