One fine sunny day, kind old farmer Hatten had a brilliant idea as he merrily brought his usual batch of hand picked fresh green garden vegetables down to the mother pig.
He walked past the white picket fence, the hens on the fresh green grass, the pretty rows of daisies and the peaceful grazing cows.
This was also done beneath a cloudless sky with his wife waving from the kitchen door.
"Good morning," says old farmer Hatten.
"Oink oink, thank you," says the mother pig.
Piglets love to snuggle up with their parents in the old red barn on all the lovely soft straw with fresh air and sunlight streaming in.
"I like living on the farm," said the baby piglet, looking up at his father happily.
But late one dark stormy night, things began to change for the farmyard animals. There was a strange noise coming from the shed, and the pig family became concerned. What was old farmer Hatten doing to the cow?
"Nnooooo," said the cow, "Nnnooooooo."
"Oh dear!," said the piglet.
Suddenly, naughty old farmer Hatten who was down on all fours and where no farmer should ever be, got squirted in the mouth with some the cow's breast milk, as her hungry calf stood by and watched.
"Mmmm," said old farmer Hatten, "I like the taste of this."
Whereupon, he got down on his knees and began sucking.
"Weren't you weaned as a child?" the confused calf asked.
"Glug, glug, glug," said old farmer Hatten.
Pretty soon, old farmer Hatten had a brilliant idea! He needed more milk, to sell to all his neighbours who hadn't been weaned yet either.
So the next fine sunny day the little calf was taken away to the veal crates and slaughtered whilst his mother cried put from the milking sheds. After all, there wasn't enough cow's milk for all of them.
Then, quite suddenly, old farmer Hatten had taken to eating chicken ovum and the old hound dog caught him sucking eggs down in the chook pen.
The concerned hound dog knew that once an egg sucking farmer got a taste for it, then there'd simply be no stopping them! The hens went quite hysterical.
The mother and father pig looked at each other.
"What is the reason for my existence?" asked the baby piglet, as some of the other pigs began to go missing.
Soon old farmer Hatten's was marketing hen's menstrual cycles and bovine mammary secretions and pig's body fat around the world to people who hasn't been weaned yet and for those who just liked the taste of it.
And on the next fine sunny day a make believe farm was opened up, so school children could read about it in books and TV cameras could come in and visit it. And for a whole Landline program we thought that everyone would all live happily ever after.
