previous sub-section
2 Food, Fuel, and Fiber: Human Environmental Relations in Prewar Buguias
next sub-section

Houselot Animals: Hogs and Chickens

Hogs, raised by all families, foraged daily in the open pasturelands. At night they returned through fenced runways to their pens, situated below each house. In the grasslands and pine savannahs they rooted for worms and grubs, fungus, and wild tubers. Those in the higher reaches of Buguias could roam as far as the kalasan, or cloud forest, well-stocked with acorns, fungus, and especially earthworms. On returning each evening they were fed boiled sweet potatoes and sweet-potato peels, pounded rice hulls and bran, kitchen garbage, and human waste. Both under- and oversized tubers were relegated to the swine; in most households, well over half of the crop went to the piggery. Hogs flourished in the rainy season, but during the annual drought the earth hardened and wild foods grew scarce, and the weakened animals suffered frequently from skin diseases.

In the American period a few individuals began raising lowland hogs, valued chiefly for their ability to gain weight on the raw sweet potatoes that the so-called native hog could scarcely digest. These animals were not ritually acceptable, however, precluding them from replacing the indigenous stock. Kikuyu grass, purportedly brought to Buguias by a teacher, was also introduced in this


31

period. The thick stolons of this aggressive exotic, which flourished in moist microhabitats, provided a fine year-round hog feed.

Other houselot animals occupied niches similar to that of swine. The average family owned some twenty chickens, while the wealthy might possess as many as two hundred. Chickens returned each night to roost in predator-secure pens or in trees, and foraged daily in the nearby pastures. All households kept dogs, primarily for their meat, feeding them bones, scraps, and, of course, sweet potatoes. And finally, a few individuals raised pigeons, ducks, and even geese.


previous sub-section
2 Food, Fuel, and Fiber: Human Environmental Relations in Prewar Buguias
next sub-section