The Big Pig Enterprise

In the past few weeks Kilchoan has become a hive of new commercial activity. One of the projects now under way is a pig co-operative, run by eight investors each of whom has put up the capital to buy one of these fine saddlebacks.

They came from Edinburgh as piglets and will be ready in September to go to Tobermory to meet a man with a large knife, after which they will be laid to rest in the investors' freezers. Before that happens, however, Hughie MacLachlan and his fellow farmers will have invested in a second batch. The project is so popular that there are already others queuing to join them.

At present the pigs are in the apportionment near the fire station, where they are doing a fine job of clearing the land of bracken. The diet they get from rooting around is supplemented, twice a day, by pig pellets. Pigs are great destroyers of bracken, of which there is far too much in the area, so it is hoped to move them around onto other land which needs their attention.