As I say, Dr Bill, the "Wild Boar" of which I speak is rather tamer than myself, and sits around in a field all day, waiting for the farmer to bring the pail down. Hence it is just about as tender as any other pork - although it does have a strnger flavour.
As to wild meat, well, it does depend what sort of "work" it has to do, I guess. Personally, I am a great admirer of the flesh of rabbits (again, apols to veggie ayleurs) which I used to catch in large numbers at one time. That is very rarely tough and makes a very nourishing meal. Hare is even better, when you can get it.
Now, there is a set of strange names for you - to do with rabbits and hares. Baby hares are "leverets", and they don't burrow, but live in "forms." Baby rabbits are "kits" (or "kittens" in some parts of UK)
You have uncovered a reference that claims hog implies that a ball disconnectomy has been performed?
i stumbled upon this, from the 1913 Webster's, while looking for substantiation of the hog/coin theory:
Hog (Page: 697)
Hog (?), n. [Prob. akin to E. hack to cut, and meaning orig., a castrated boar; cf. also W. hwch swine, sow, Armor. houc'h, hoc'h. Cf. Haggis, Hogget, and Hoggerel.]
1. (Zoöl.) A quadruped of the genus Sus, and allied genera of Suidæ; esp., the domesticated varieties of S. scrofa, kept for their fat and meat, called, respectively, lard and pork; swine; porker; specifically, a castrated boar; a barrow...
This early reference also provides some interesting alternative definitions, including an unshorn sheep, a rough, flat scrubbing broom for scrubbing a ship's bottom under water, and a paper-making device of some sort.
What about 'Boss Hog'? He was a character on some show my dad used to watch. What is a 'boss hog' in Pigland? Is there some kind of dominant hog that bosses the others around? And how is this behavior demonstrated? Or is this just piggy poetic with the "o" in boss and hog providing the large measure of oral/aural satisfaction, such as it is?
Back to my dad. He always calls one of his many hummingbirds he feeds here at the farm each summer, "Boss Hog." There is always one very dominant bird that defends at least two feeders at a time so that no hummingbird dare try to stay long enough for even a modest dip.
Dear WW: I think your "Boss Hogg" came from TV series featuring an ludicrously corrupt comic sheriff, who was always foiled by a couple young stalwarts driving super-charged unglazed vehicles with all doors welded shut.
It is fun to watch the aerial mock combat of male hummingbirds. That was my principal motive in putting out feeders.
I found title of TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard".
[Title] So Tiny, So Sweet...So MEAN [subtitle] If hummingbirds were as big as ravens, it probably wouldn't be safe to go for a walk in the woods Their size makes them cute — and also dictates their fretful, bickering, high-rev way of life. ... this fearless opportunist is a slave to its raging metabolism.
It's the equivalent of a 180-pound human having to scrounge up 204,300 calories a day, or about 171 pounds of hamburger. ... It's enough to give even a very pretty little bird the personality of a junkyard dog. A scientific paper about the rufous hummingbird includes this endearing notation: "SOCIAL BEHAVIOR: None. Individual survival seems only concern." ----------------- *ROFL! The good doctor dislikes boars, border collies, and hippos, but loves hummingbirds!
Weeeell, I had two uncles who were both pig farmers and I spent far too much time mucking out the barrows when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Barrow is what pighouses are called in Zild. Mature males were boars. Mature females were gilts until they'd had a couple of litters and were then known as sows. Pigs between about six weeks and a year are the ones usually carted off to bring home the bacon, and they are known as weaners.
Although I must admit that weaner seemed to be a malleable term. It's also used to describe both young boars and sows between a year and two years which aren't going to be bred, at least at my rellies' farms.
[pig story - ignore if you wish!]
One of my uncles had a sow called Maud. She was a champion farrower, tending to have between eight and ten piglets at a time, and was also a good mother. This is not entirely commmon in the farmed pig world, where mum quite often lies down and reduces the household food bill by crushing a number of her offspring to death. Most pig farmers remove the young except for feeding time if they are kept in pens. The problem doesn't tend to be so bad if the pigs have the run of a paddock.
Maud was huge. I don't know what she weighed, but she was bigger than any of the breeding boars on the farm. She was bad-tempered with them, even when she was in heat, and they approached her with great caution when they were trying to do their bit for the propagation of the species. I fondly remember my younger cousin coming rushing in from outside one day yelling "Mum, mum, the boar's trying to murder Maud!". We all piled out to see what was happening, given the improbability of any boar on that farm wanting to fight big mamma. It turned out to be the piggy equivalent of the birds and the bees, with Maud in fine form, trying to bite her swain in half while he was furiously trying to do his duty. We all fell about laughing. We called her the Black Widow for a while, but she was really still just Maud.
Maud was like a pet dog and would follow my uncle around the farm. Being not very big himself, my uncle looked rather incongruous being followed around by this very, very large pig who would nuzzle his backside whenever he stopped, grunting contentedly. She loved being scratched between the ears and on the snout. If you tried to leave her in the paddock with a gate safely between you, she would simply trample part of the fence down to get to where ever she wanted to be. This included my aunt's garden, unfortunately. Maud developed a distinct liking for the flowers of roses, and would walk down the driveway nipping off the blooms and munching them with great relish. Needless to say, my aunt was not a happy camper when it came to Maud.
It all came to a head one night when my aunt and uncle were sitting watching TV. They heard a crash from the front of the house and the sound of breaking glass. Burglary was not unknown in the Fairfield area, so my uncle grabbed something heavy and went to investigate, only to find that Maud had simply lain down on the porch (as was her wont). But this time she'd managed to wedge part of her anatomy against the front door which gave up the ghost under her weighty, if tender, mercies ...
Maud wound up in a specially reinforced pen for the rest of her career. She screamed day and night for a couple of weeks, apparently, until she got used to the new arrangements. Can you imagine the noise?
The term "hog" is simply not used in Zild except in relation to slightly reorganised Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
He ain't the only one. Wild boar is highly esteemed by many here, inlcuding those of us who would rather let someone else risk their life by trying to end a wild boar's.
Which I did a couple of times years ago when dragged into the bush by friends. I found I didn't get much of a kick out of pig hunting. Too much hard slog through wet bush and bracken to find the damned things. Then, when you'd managed to kill one, you had to cart the beggar back to the road.
I tend think of pighunting in much the same terms as Oscar Wilde regarded foxhunting: "The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible".
But I'm very partial to wild pig, particularly if it's cooked in a hangi ... [drooling -e]
Pigs between about six weeks and a year are known as weaners...[It] seemed to be a malleable term. It's also used to describe both young boars and sows...
...as well as the meat product sometimes derived from them, cooked over the campfire and served on a bun with mustard and relish? sorry, just couldn't resist that one [cover-head-and-scuttle-hastily-for-cover-ducking-brickbats-and-old-shoes e]
[Aside to non-US readers: what USns call a hot dog or frankfurter is attributed by many to an origin not in Germany (Frankfurt) but rather Austria (Vienna, hence "wiener"). Sometimes the same person will use both names indiscriminately, not recognizing the inherent inconsistency. (Or perhaps there's a delicate distinction that the gourmand in me doesn't know about.) ]
Dear Keiva: You mistake me I admire border collies, only deplore their unhappiness when denied a chance to employ their abilities at herding animals. Hummingbirds I have watched for many hours duelling, but very careful never to injure. Ruby seems a better description. My dictionary says "rufous" is rust color, like William the Conqueror was called "Rufus". For a really mean bird, I have seen kingbirds sit on the backs of eagles, plucking out a stream of feathers, to suggest to the eagle not to trespass on the kingbird's territory.
William Rufus was William II, William the Conqueror's son, who was found dead in the New Forest with an arrow in him in what may or may not have been a hunting accident (I have a vague idea it was deer hunting but it may have been boar hunting).
Stales, that is not quite true... Cows are what we have on the east coast-- Cattle is what they have in Texas.
if you drive from NYC to say Cornell, to say Hi to David and Betsy, what you pass on the way are cows. Up state NY (NYC is downstate) is dairy country. it is udderly clear, that all you see are she cows.
in Texas, the animals you see from your car have horns, (often rather bigs ones) and its not udderly clear which are the she's or he's. if its not clear, they are cattle!
....only city folk refer to a bunch of bovines as "cows".
and in the UK, not only do farmers usually refer to a mixed herd as, " ... a field of cows ..." but one farmer I stayed with in darkest Gloucestershire had the biggest, fiercest Hereford Bull I have ever encountered (or ever wish to!)invariably referred to it as, " ... her ... ", as in, "her be a right bugger to 'andle."
Dear RC: I am really surprised to hear of a Hereford bull being vicious. The first Hereford bull I remember seeing had a girl riding on his back, coming in to be fed. I thought she was making a potentially dangerous mistake. My favorite uncle was a dairyman, and he had warned me never to trust a dairy bull, because they may seem docile, but can without any warning becone life threatening. So when the girl dismounted, I asked her if she had not been taking a foolish risk, and she told me Hereford bulls were pussycats, and easily made pets. We subsequently owned a Hereford bull, and he too was a pet.
Dear wofahulicodoc: My kids were in 4H for quite a few years, exhibiting beef animals, mostly steers, of course. But we had contact with quite a few beef breeders, and it seems to be the case that beef bulls just are not dangerous, while dairy bulls are. At least that seems to be the situation in US. So I'm not judging just by two specimens.
I just conferred with my wise aged father and asked, "What do we call groups of those great bovines in the fields?" He said, "The bulls and the cows; the heifers and the calves." And then I asked, "But what do we call the whole group?" He answered, "The herd."
And that's straight out of the horse's mouth, right here in southern Virginia.
I wish I understood more about parts of speech but I don't so I need help here.....
Surely there's a difference in syntax or something between the collective noun "herd" and the word "cattle". To my uneducated mind, it seems that one could say "a herd of cattle" or "a herd of cows" and be correct both times?????
A "herd of cattle" is perfectly acceptable where I come from. Unless there was some doubt about what kind of animal it was, however, you would usually just refer to the "herd". A "herd of cows" is also acceptable if that is, indeed, what they are.
And I dunno what kind of Herefords Bill made the acquaintance of, but a Hereford bull is just as likely to have a go at you as any other I've encountered although Jersey bulls are reputed to be downright deadly.
Here's a funny story, quite true: Years ago I was tramping (read "hiking" you blithering heathens in the US) up the Matukituki Valley near Wanaka. The first part of the tramp is over the top paddocks of Mt Aspiring Station. Stu Aspinall used to keep his Hereford heifers up there during the summer because they're relatively docile creatures and that cuts down on the complaints from frightened townies out for a wander in the mountains.
But they are curious and will follow you to see what you're up to.
We were meandering up the valley in no particular hurry, accompanied by a few heifers who were just along for the walk. They'll follow damned near anything that's moving; they're not renowned for their intelligence. Two heavily-laden girls caught up with us and overtook us. The heifers, obligingly, decided that they liked the girls' pace better than ours, and took off with them.
But the girls were nervous of the cattle despite our assurances that they weren't vicious and began to walk faster. So did the heifers. The last we saw of them, the girls were pretty much jogging along as fast as they could, packs bouncing up and down on their backs and everything loose rattling, with the heifers obligingly keeping pace. They'd have been pretty exhausted by the time they reached the Bluff about five miles further on, which was as far as the cattle could go without fording the river.
In looking for info on the Marx Brothers, and Is that why Groucho had the duck?, I came across this line in their movie "Duck Soup": "I could dance with you till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather dance with the cows when you came home.'
wabe = rhymes with Abe (honest, of course), babe, and I can't think of anymore. Which brings up an interesting philosophical question, but I can't think of it either. Back into the gyre....
I asked my friend the pig farmer for his expertise on our great pig debate, and he says:
My first reaction is on the "high on the hog". I really didn't know (and don't) where it came from and really it doesn't have much to do with the business of raising hogs today. Some of the comments in the string might be as accurate as any. The muscle that is the most valuable is the loin muscle and it is on the top of the hog. Also it could refer to the fact that on the traditional farms of the past, hogs were raised not only for food and lard, but they have traditionally been a profitable part of a diversified farm (a few chickens, a cow or two, maybe a steer, some hogs, and crops) and they were often referred to as the mortgage lifters because they would sell some and make the mortgage payment.
As to the comment about sausage, not everything goes into the sausage, it is just muscle and fat with some seasonings usually put into a casing. Today the casings mostly are man-made, but in history the casings were what was available, which at the time of slaughter, there was always the intestines available which were cleaned and used. A note on this is that we went to a Japanese restaurant in Hawaii, and cow intestines were served as an option on the buffet, so in some areas of the world, they are a delicacy.
The comment about 'everything is used except the squeal' is correct and the person who wrote about that is the only way to make a profit is correct. It is amazing what all of it is used for, but a short list would not only include the meat and hide (some shoes are made from pigskin, it is a soft and flexible leather), but the gelatins are used for the capsule casings on our medicines, the thyroid is used for the manufacture of one of our medicines, the heart valves are used for replacements in humans, - I think you get the idea. It isn't gross, it is just a fact of life that we humans need to take advantage of all that god has offered us to help us survive.
In our area of the United States we use the following terms and definitions. I remind you that they are different elsewhere, just as some areas use the word 'soda', others use 'pop', and still others use the word 'coke'. They all refer to the same thing.
Boars - uncastrated male pig, usually of breeding age but not necessarily (Breeding age is around 7 to 8 months)
Barrow - castrated male pig of any age
Sow - a female pig which has had baby pigs
Gilt - a female pig which hasn't had any baby pigs
Hog vs. Pig we use these terms interchangeably, but I usually think of a hog as older than a pig
By the way, a hog will reach sexual maturity at around 280 to 300 pounds. Most hogs in the United States are marketed between 240 to 300 pounds depending on what the packing plant wants and what the markets are doing (price going up or down). This is usually between 5 1/2 months and 7 months of age.
Boss hog does refer to the television character, but there also is always a social structure in a group or pen of pigs, unless the group is too large. The structure is very much like the gang structure and there is one pig nobody challenges which would be considered the 'boss hog'. If you mix two groups of hogs, they act just like the Palinstines and Israilites, they fight until a new 'boss hog' is found.
It is now illegal to feed slop to pigs. It was very prevalent around cities with a restaurant trade, but it encouraged trichinea so it was made illegal.
I would consider a weaner a pig which is between the age of weaning (depending on the farm it is as early as 2 weeks or as late as 5 weeks) to around the 40 pound weight (8 to 12 weeks). After that it is a feeder pig and then it is a finish hog. A finish hog gets up to the slaughter weight and if kept for breeding it becomes part of the breeding herd which consists of gilts, sows and boars.
While I don't know a lot about the cattle or dairy business, I do know that a bull is the same as a boar, an uncastrated male, a steer the same as a barrow, a heifer the same as a gilt, and a cow is the same as a sow.
About the comments about eating Boar meat, it is usually used in heavily seasoned sausages. That is because it is ground up very finely which eliminates the toughness, and the seasoning covers over the boar odor in the meat. Because of boar odor, we castrate all of the boars at birth which are not going to be used for breeding purposes. If we don't, the plant will dock us on our checks.
Hog Run probably refers to when out west they would herd the hogs from an area to a marketing yard next to the railroads. It would be done across open lands with a large number of hogs as well as farmers herding them. Today when we talk about the hog run, it is how many hogs are delivered (by truck) to the slaughter plants in each area, usually by state or a total on the whole nation. So when you see or hear of the hog run in Iowa today was 110,000, it would mean that 110,000 hogs were delivered to the plants in Iowa today.
Sou-eee was probably a noise or hog call made when feeding hogs in pens outside. This was done on the old traditional farms of 30 years and more ago.
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