I learned that today, no matter the species, pigs are still pigs. They eat a lot. It has been only a couple of days of me keeping the pig trench alive, I’m already down to half of my dried slime storage, and it seems like it will keep going down.

I suppose keeping 12 mini pigs at the same is still beyond my food producing capability. I tried to starve them by saving a bit of last night’s feed portion, and they would squeak, and grunt all night; The noise disturbed my sleep, I had no choice but to give in to their demands.

That’s why, I decided to trim down their population this morning. Out of 12 mini pigs, which consisted of eight sows, and four barrows—four sows are in gestation. That left me the simple choice to butcher the four non-pregnant sows and two barrows. Before I butchered them, I tried to sacrifice a couple sow and barrow to the ancient door to try to open it. But they just added to the list of things that didn’t work out.

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I threw the entrails of the butchered pigs to the slime trench, constructed a simple meat smoker dome using stones, used nut branches and roots from the last harvest as fire fuels, and smoked the hell out of those meats for preservation.

The smell of the smoked meat will fill the cavern the whole night tonight, but it’s a delicious smell. I can’t wait to taste the meat tomorrow.

That aside, I wonder what I would do when the four pregnant sows finally gave birth? I mean, as far as I know, aren’t sows supposed to produce eight to a dozen piglets per pregnancy? How do I take care of more than thirty piglets at the same time? Do I even have the heart to butcher and eat little piglets? Fully grown pigs are fine, but piglets… Let’s cross that bridge when that time comes.