Pigs have gone to abattoir

Here they are just before heading down to the trailer.

Aww they were cute!

Doug had to get them to the abattoir between 5 and 6am (!) on Monday morning, so we loaded them up on Sunday night. They trotted in fine and we went and had some dinner before I left to go to Toulouse.
When we came out of the house so Doug could say bye bye to me as normal, we discovered that they had managed to climb over the top of the trailer and got free. So we had a super rush in the pouring rain to get the ramp bad up and get them back in - quickly so that I could leave. I managed to fall in a big slide of mud but we got them back and I left Doug fashioning a roof for the trailer to stop them leaping overboard again. I had a quick change of muddy clothes and got to the airport on time so all good!
The roof he made was good and they just went to sleep the second time they were put in the trailer, apparently it was hard to wake them up when he got them there.
I was sad to say goodbye to them on Sunday, they were very good pigs, friendly and funny. But then it was also a relief to get them down the the abattoir ok - and I am looking forward to the meat. For Doug it is going to be nice not having to feed and water them twice a day.

Doug now has the guts we asked to keep and the blood which will go in the freezer until we can pick everything else up on Friday and spend the day making pork based things as described in previous entry

I wrote on the description of what we wanted from the butcher on to this diagram. Doug went through it with the butcher this morning when he picked up the guts and blood and the butcher seemed happy with it apparently. We are hoping that this time we will get more of the fat left on the chops than before and that they will skin some of the bits we want too.