Grubhogs, Buzzboys and Newtwives

I have a nasty cold and can't do much except lay around looking sad, so I had a few minutes to think about grubhog husbandry!  You know, instead of nothing!

Grubhogs can be hunted in the wild but are more likely to give better meat if intentionally farmed.  "Domestic" grubhogs tend to be fatter, larger and more nutritious than their feral counterparts, reaching ideal slaughter weight within about six months as opposed to a year.  A large, relatively inland city like Newtopia would have to ship grubhog meat in from a ranch, as the worms can only thrive in wet mud near wide swaths of rainforest.

Ornery and voracious though they are, grubhogs are only awake for eight or nine hours a day.  A diurnal species, they emerge from the mud at dawn and begin to eat anything that they can fit in their mouths.  The job of the rancher is to force the grubhogs from their safe sleeping patch into the rainforest, where the worms can forage and carouse until they exhaust themselves.  The rancher must also be prepared to frighten/fight predators, as it's not only amphibians who find grubhogs delicious.  At the end of the feeding period, the rancher drives the worms back to their sleeping patch: a muddy creek bed where the worms can burrow and sleep until the next sunrise.  All of these factors must be in evidence; you can't just keep a grubhog herd in a pen next to your home.  "Domestic" grubhogs are an oxymoron, as they will always be more or less wild.  

It's also the rancher's prerogative to chose a few grubhogs to pupate and breed.  The picks of the herd will cocoon themselves and stay that way for the last few months of their lives.  During this time it behooves the rancher to be more hands-on, keeping the cocoons in a relatively dry shed where predators cannot find them.  On the eve of hatching, a wise rancher relocates the pupae to the rainforest, as the emergent adults will be ready to wreak havoc.  Adult grubhogs are colloquially called big bad beetle boars: they vaguely resemble rhinoceros beetles, are mostly armor, and are the size of a small car.  The beetle boars will fight and mate with characteristic brutality, leaving nothing alive but the resulting fertilized eggs (and hopefully the rancher).  The rancher then collects the eggs and plants them in the shed until they hatch, whereupon the young grubhogs can be introduced to the herd. 

Also I improved upon Ace's design a little.  I'm fighting every instinct I have to make him the goodest boy.  And no, Olivia, we can't just keep one of the little cute grubhogs for a while.  Don't touch it.  No, don't hug it!  Go bother your kids!