New Piglets

 The new piglets have settled into their new home, and are doing well. They play with their blankets, rags, and toys. They are little gluttons about the food. They're still shy of me, but with time they will come to know that I'm the giver food and toys. 

I didn't think I'd have piglets again. I didn't go out looking for these. A friend is moving and needed to give these little guys to someone. So I took them. I figured that if I couldn't handle them, I'd give them to somebody else. But so far, so good. Perhaps this group will be my last set of piglets. Time will tell. 

Pig Trap

Trying to catch half wild pigs in my homemade cobbled together contraptions has given me new insights into pig catching. Once cornered, the buggers are like mini tanks and ramming machines, and they don't give up. Bam. Bam. Bam. They even tried jumping out, managing to hook their front feet over the top of the 4 foot high fence. And after many minutes of ramming, they actually busted a hole right through the fencing.

I decided that a trap needs to be either small or very large....and extremely tough. With an intermediate sized trap the piglets just keep ramming the sides. It's too large to stop them from getting a run start before they ram, and too small for them to settle down and hide in a corner.

The professional pig trap (yes you could make one yourself if you know what you're doing and have the  tools) is super sturdy. This one is well welded, completely made of metal, and strong. It weighs 94 lbs, though heavy, I can load, unload, and set it up by myself. And its construction is obviously something that even a cautious pig will accept and eventually walk into. After all, it caught my two suspicious piglets. By the way, they went berserk once trapped. But they couldn't bust out. Believe me, they surely tried. 

This trap uses a guillotine door, which is down (closed) in this photo. 

Now that I've solved my own pig problem, I plan to rent this trap out. I have a few people who already want to use the trap to solve their pig problem.

I transport the trap in the bed of my pick up, but it's a tad longer than the bed. 

I use a bed extender to safely hike the trap in the truck bed when I transport it.  

On Catching Piglets

As you might remember, my mama pig and her two babies have been loose on the farm. Well I'm real proud of myself that I caught them, getting the two babies into a piglet pen without mama attacking me. After securely latching the door, I thought, "Job well done." 

Ha! Not quite so, I soon discovered. Before I had the chance to walk away, the babes tried multiple times to jump out, with one successfully hooking it's front feet on the top of the pallet fence. Now this fence is 42 inches in height, so that's quite a high jump. So I decided the pen needed a wire roof to prevent jumping, and I happened to have suitable piece of fencing on the farm. But I needed to go get it before the piglets escaped. So I dragged over a couple of wood pallets and laid them across the top of the pen. So far, so good. Off I went to get the materials.

You guessed it......when I returned the piglets were gone. How? First you need to know that I have two piglet pens side by side. Pen #1 has 4 partially grown piglets in it, pen #2 next door is was empty before I put the newly captured piglets into #2. When I threw to pallets over the top of pen #2, the piglets in pen #1 apparently got curious. Standing on their back legs they were able to use their snouts to push the roof pallet off, dropping it into pen #2, thus creating a nice pallet ladder for the captured piglets to climb out. Drats! Foiled again! 

So I'm back to square one on pig catching. I haven't given up yet, but I need to come up with a better design for catching and confining. These wild pigs are much harder to deal with than the commercial types. 

The baby piglets quickly returned to the house area, a spot that they are familiar and comfortable with. So I'm making piglet trap #2 up by the house, using their pig trail into the woods as the trap site. I've dragged a few cattle panels up from the goat pasture (they were used as a pen to separate kids from their mamas). I've lined the pig trail with a panel on either side (the panels are 16' long). The far end is currently open, but I will bring the ends together and clip them together, shutting the trap when I'm ready. The entrance will also be stoutly clipped shut once the piglets are in the trap. 

I've been feeding the pigs inside what will become the trap. At first they were nervous, but now they are quite comfortable with the arrangement. The past few days I've been approaching while they are eating, allowing them to turn and run out the back while I "close the trap" at the entrance. They now are no longer spooked, but instead watch me, returning to eat once I walk away. Looks like I'm almost ready to try closing the end and trapping them. 

Once trapped, I plan to run them into a small cage, then transport them one at a time to the piglet pen.......which I have already roofed in anticipation. Well at least that's the plan. 

Pig in a Pond

Stopped into the house for a glass of cold water, only to hear happy piggy sounds coming from the front yard. Huh? I opened the door to this.......

Dang pig!!!!!!! There are many, many reasons I shouldn't have a friendly pig running loose on my farm, and this is one of them. But ya know, I can't help but smile and laugh. She is smart enough to know where to find a good spot to cool off on a hot day........and smart enough to have gotten out of every pen I've made so far. Other than resorting to concrete or metal pipes, I'm not sure how I'm going to convince this pig to stay in an enclosure. I hate putting her into a small pen, but it very well might come to that. 

Pig Udders

Ok, I've learned something new about pigs. Well at least something new about Lava and her piglets. I can't say for sure that this applies to all pigs. These two piglets have a strong preference for which teat they nurse from. And as you can see, Lava has ended up with only two that are producing milk.

The few times that I've managed to see the piglets nursing, they each always suckle from the same teat. The male has the most hindmost one, the female has the most forward one.

I've raised plenty of puppies and never noticed individual pups claiming specific teats. Oh, there's competition for the better ones, but they jostle around swapping teats as the milk runs out and everybody gets a chance at the milk bar. But these two piglets seem to have laid claimed to a specific teat and don't exchange. I wonder if that's normally the case with pigs.

By the way, I've checked Lava's breasts and they appear normal. No heat, no unusual hardness, and the milk itself looks fine. So her breasts are not infected. She just only has two that are producing milk right now (the others did have milk prior to her delivering), and right after I took those photos she laid down and nursed the babies just fine. 

Piglets Up Close

I finally got to see the piglets close up. The 2 surviving babies are fat, round, active, and alert. They appear to be doing great. The little skinny runt didn't make it, as expected.

The one piglet is a boy, the other a girl. They look so fat that they appear shiny. Lava has been a good mom, and with only 2 mouths to feed, she has plenty of milk. 

Pig Update

Finally I got a break. No rain during the morning. So I managed to get the electric fence put into place......but not operational. Not yet. Perhaps tomorrow. Why? Not enough sun. You see, there is a new battery in the solar charger and it needs to be fully charged before I start using it. Otherwise it dramatically shortens the life of the battery. With all the recent rain, of course there hasn't been much sun.

I got a pleasant surprise today. Lava showed herself. Yup, she's inside pasture # 3. And looking good. What's really cool is that she has 3 piglets with her. Two look chunky but one is half the size and spindly. A classic runt. I only saw them from a distance so I couldn't tell if there is something wrong with it. I'll never know if she had more babies or not. With the wet, cold weather last week, conditions weren't very good for newborn piglets to survive without shelter of some sort. I'm pleased that two look very robust and are doing great inspite of the weather.

Pigs - Friday

Don't ask. Today was a miserable day to be working outdoors. Rain almost constant all day long. And this has been the coldest day I've recorded since 2004 (when I started keeping daily records). The high today was only 63°. Plus, no sun. For someone accustomed to the high 70s and low 80s, today felt cold, wet, miserable. 

Shelly greeted me this morning for breakfast. Still no sign of Lava. But I didn't hang around for long, so perhaps she visited the feed buckets later. I set up the last of the plastic poles for the fencing, then estimated how many more I might need. Then feeling damp and chilled, I retreated to the house where I set about restarting the woodstove. Wrapping a blanket around myself, I settled into my reclining chair to warm up, feeling somewhat defeated. I concluded that today was not going to be a working day for me. I wasn't physically up to working in the rain once again.

The weather hasn't been with me this week. Plus I have other obligations, so I can't devote an entire day to installing the electric fence. Thus I will do what I can and leave the rest to fate. Hopefully the pigs will stay settled in their new found home, giving me time to secure the boundaries. But I realize that they have feral roots and the desire for space. If they return to the forest, their birth land, then so be it. I truly hope they stay put, but I will accept their decision if they opt to move on. While I know that they would be safer and have an easier life here, they don't understand that. Their chances in the forest are not good. Lots of hunting activity around here. Let's hope they stay put for a bit longer. Let's hope for dry weather this weekend. 

Pigs - Thursday Update

Rain off and on all day hindered my work today. Not that I didn't work in the rain. I did! But when the plants are wet, they are slippery (and so is the ground) and more difficult to pull out. Thus I work slower. I now have three sides of the pasture completely clear, and the fourth partially cleared. 

Shelly is still in the pasture, but I haven't seen nor heard from Lava. Shelly showed up within two minutes of my arrival, so the buggers are aware of my presence. I could hear him running through the ferns, grunting as he got closer. He actually seemed happy to see me. I found out later that his joy of seeing he was strictly for the pleasure of driving me nuts. He still had a little food leftover from last night, so he wasn't all that interested in breakfast. 

Getting right to work pulling ferns, I had brought along a pair of work gloves, pruning shears, garden knife, and loppers. Setting them aside, I started making my way down the fence. You guessed it.......Shelly sneaked over and stole the work gloves. He let out a drawn out shill squeal which got my attention. Once I made eye contact with him, he made a couple of hops and butt-twists then took off, gloves in mouth. Bugger! Blasted bugger! I never saw those gloves again. They're somewhere lost out in those ferns, never to be found again I'm sure. 

Ok. I picked up all the tools and put them on the other side of the fence. No more pig stealing shenanigans today. 

I had also brought along a roll of electric fence rope, the lightweight stuff. It's easy to work with and effective as a hotwire. Since I no longer had gloves, I figured I'd set up the electric fence on the fenceline that I had cleared. That way I'd get something accomplished before I had to trudge back to the house for more gloves. The roll I was working with was only a partial roll, so I wasn't sure how much ground I would be able to over with it. I had a number of fiberglass poles and about 50 plastic poles. So I set to work getting a dozen poles in, then ran the electric fence wire, then installed more poles, then more wire. I gradually worked my way down the short side of the pasture, then started down the long side. I wasn't down the long side more than 10 feet before Shelly showed up again. He kept ambushing my legs, biting at my shoes. Dang pig! I finally had enough by now. I was wet from the rain and getting chilly. I was in no mood to play games, so I yelled and waved my arms, chasing Shelly. 

Shelly got his revenge. He found something else to do that didn't involve me directly. He began messing with the electric fence wire. By the time I noticed it, Shelly had chewed the wire in about 2 dozen places. I guess he was just curious and looking for fun, but he sure was destructive. He ruined about 150' of wire. Sheesh! By now I was fed up with the morning. I was thoroughly soaked from the rain, getting cold, and was losing badly to a pig. 

Having errands to do around lunchtime, I didn't get back to the pig problem until mid afternoon. Shelly came a'runnin' when he heard me arrive. I only got about 2 hours work pulling ferns before the rain drove me to call it quits. Shelly kept me company the whole time, occasionally ambushing me but generally just watching from a distance. I'm pretty disappointed in my progress today.  But Shelly seemed pleased. 

Working on Securing The Pasture

I've been clearing the fenceline around pasture #3 and I'm almost 3/4 done. The rain surely isn't helping my efforts. Luckily most of today was dry enough to work. I've been tackling the three sides that are the least densely packed with ferns. The fourth side is fairly solid and less likely that the pigs would penetrate it when there's easier areas. Well, at least that's what I'm hoping for. 

I know for certain the Shelly is still in that pasture. The little scoundrel followed me around all the time that I was working. Grunting from a distance, and occasionally sneaking up behind me to snuffle my shoes and generally startle me. I'm guessing that he won't be leaving Lava, so hopefully she is in that pasture too. Shelly is quite capable of leaving this area if he wanted to......thus another good sign that Lava is around since he's sticking around. 

I've been putting out food in various locations. I've seen Shelly visiting all 3 buckets, but I haven't had a glimpse of Lava today. Perhaps tomorrow I'll spot her as I run the hotwire and clear more ferns. 

One more day's work and the easy escape routes will be blocked. Then I'll work to get the fourth side secured. Wish me luck the Lava stays in that pasture for at least another day or two. By Friday afternoon the hotwire should be around the entire pasture enclosure. The hotwire with the field fence behind it should effectively hold the pigs in. I would have thought that the field fence and barbed wire combination alone would have worked, if I hadn't witnessed the hole they tore right through the field fence. Amazingly strong and destructive when they want to be! 

Lava Looks Ready

Yesterday Lava rooted around in the deep sawdust I put into the shelter I made for her. And she wasn't interested in dinner. So things are progressing. Looks like she's ready to have her piglets. 

Then it rained all night. I wasn't worried because the shelter will stay dry. I was pleased with myself that I used a new, heavy duty tarp for the roof. It's bound to keep Lava and her babies nice n dry. 

WHAMO! Came down this morning to check on Lava and bring her her favorite breakfast......and they're gone! Neither Lava nor Shelly were in the pen. I found one spot behind the new shelter where one of them, most likely Lava, tore a hole in the fencing. Yup, right through the fencing. I can only imagine that she was in labor and had an urgent need to get away. Animals often remove themselves to a remote spot to give birth, but I thought Lava was pretty content where she was. Looks like I was wrong. She's mostly feral rather than domestic, so I'm not totally surprised that she did something like this. 

........skip to the end.........

After an all morning search I spied both Lava (very briefly from a distance) and Shelly in the back of the property. They were in the very back of pasture #3. This pasture is totally unimproved, meaning that it is extremely thick with a dense growth of ferns. Not even the sheep and donkey bother to venture into this pasture enclosure. Finding two hiding pigs would be close to impossible without scaring the daylights out of them doing it. 

Im thinking that Lava has delivered her litter. If that's so, perhaps she will stay put for at least a few days. This may give me a chance to line the fence with a hotwire in order to permanently confine them. Of course this means clearing the fenceline a bit first. The fencing there will confine sheep and a donkey, but it's not set up to keep pigs in or out. 

Looks like I have a job for the next couple days! 

Piglets Soon?

Lava looks to be getting near the end of her pregnancy. Since I've never seen this before, I can't say for certain that piglets are soon to arrive. But she's developed quite the set of udders. 

She hasn't been nesting yet. But do pigs makes nests? Based upon the behavior of the feral sow in the back of my property, I assume that Lava will want a shelter to give birth in. So I cobbled pallets together to make a rain shelter for her. I first measured the feral sows lava tube shelter in the back of the farm, then made Lava's about 6 inches wider. Not that Lava is bigger.....its just that the pallets fit together better that way. Lava has been checking the new shelter out, but so far doesn't hang around it. She still prefers her spot under the trees. 

With all this wet I packed some dry grass in her new shelter. Lava checked that out too but still hasn't decided to lay down there. Later today after the rain slows down I plan to spread a bag of sawdust in there to help keep the dampness down. We shall see what Lava thinks of that. 

I truly have no idea if she is about to give birth or is still a few weeks away. Having never seen this before, I only gave a general idea of what's happening. It will surely be a learning experience for both of us. 

Pig Rototillers?

I recently was reading an article on how to ring a pig. Applying hog rings to the snout of a pig is to prevent rooting behavior. By the way, I don't ring my pigs. I've read articles on the internet of how short nosed breeds of pigs don't have a rooting behavior, but I don't think that's accurate. All pigs root up the ground to some degree or another. Some people say the certain breeds don't root, while others say just the opposite of the very same breed of pig. Personally my experience says it depends upon the individual pig. Some definitely like to root more so than others.

All my pigs so far have been mixed feral types. Some have more domestic pig in them than others, but they all have been at least 50% feral. Some of them were avid rooters, others had little interest in rooting other than scuffing the surface. 

My current pigs, Lava and Shelly, aren't big rooters. Yes they root a bit, but their hearts aren't into it. They snuffle here and there, but generally grass grows just about everywhere in their enclosure. They have one spot that they like to churn up rocks, but that's it. 

I often see recommendations on various farming/gardening forums to use pigs to "plow" the garden. I don't see that as great advice for a few of reasons. First, not all pigs are avid rooters. So you can't just order "2 piglets please that will be good rooters". Second, they are selective rooters. They surely aren't going to go down your rows and politely plow up your garden beds. (You will notice in the photo that my pigs haven't rooted most of their enclosure. The grass is doing just fine!) Third, some pigs just snuffle the surface, while others like digging down to China. So instead of plowing, they are more apt to make lunar landscape craters with deep foxholes here and there. You will end up with more of a headache than when you started. Top that off with the fact that pig activity tends to leave behind compacted soil, I personally don't see the benefit of using pigs to prepare a garden site. 

Bottom line........if you want your garden tilled, I wouldn't rely upon a pig to get the job done. Use a rototiller, plow, or shovel instead. 

Piglet Visitors

Look who's come to visit! 

3 little eight week old piglets. One black boy (on the left), one black girl ( standing on the right), and one dark chocolate girl (laying down on the right). For right now they are in my quarantine pen......

This pen is made from plastic pallets, except for the door. Those plastic pallets are quite heavy and would be impossible as a door. The plastic makes things easy to hose clean and sanitize between uses. 

The pen is five pallets long, so it gives the piglets some space to move around. They have blankets and sheets to lay on in the far end of the pen, which has a rainproof roof & tarp. They also have food and water bowls, and toys to play with. Yes, toys. Piglets love to play if given the opportunity. 

Usually the first few days in the new pen the piglets are shy. But these little guys are quite bold and confident. It didn't take long for them to rearrange their bedroom, check out the toys, and eat a meal. Tomorrow  I plan to treat them for lice and deworm them. Then they will be ready for their new homes. 

Home Slaughter

"B" asked me the other day when he was picking up his live New Year's Day lamb to haul it to the slaughterhouse for processing...."Do you do your own slaughtering?" 

Many a time I've been asked if I do my own or send the animal to the slaughterhouse. Plain and simple, I do my own. I feel it is the most humane. It also happens to be the most self reliant method and cheapest, but I do it because it's the least disturbing to my animals. There is no excitement of being loaded onto a truck, no stress of being transported 2 hours and held in a strange place with strange smells and other strange animals at the end of the journey. No anxiety of being separated alone from the flock/herd.  No fear of being approached and handled by strangers. I'd rather have my animals at home, at ease, and be completely unaware that something is about to happen. They are instantly rendered unconscious using a gun, and then killed with no pain, no sensation. Killing is done by cutting the main arteries and bleeding out. 

I never like killing my animals. I find it stressful (I fear I might make a mistake), disturbing (I don't like watching an animal die). I'm ultra careful to make sure everything goes perfectly. 

Once the animal is dead, I have no trouble butchering it out. Butchering a chicken or rabbit is quick and easy. Butchering a lamb, goat, or pig takes more time and work, but it isn't difficult. I've never helped with something larger like a cow or horse. Having worked in veterinary medicine most of my life,   I have no aversion to butchering. It's the slaughtering that is difficult.

Is The Pig Pregnant?

For the past few weeks I haven't noticed Lava, the female pig, coming into heat. And Shelly, the boar is leaving her alone. Perhaps I just missed the signs, but I'm getting to think that she might be pregnant. It's really too early to tell for sure, but I'm noticing a few changes. 

#1- Her ribs have sprung. That is, she has gotten thicker across the area of her hindmost ribs. This is a change I'm familiar with in dogs. Does it apply to pigs too? We shall soon find out. 

#2- Her teats have become most pronounced. She no longer looks like a young little girl. 

#3- Her clitoral hood has changed position. When I last checked to see if she was in heat, the pointy thing in the photo below, circled in yellow, was pointing down more. It has definitely shifted upward. If it continues to point more and more upward, then Lava is indeed pregnant. 

The gestation period for pigs is 3 months, 3 weeks, plus 3 days. So if she is pregnant, it will still be awhile before she delivers. But knowing how slow I can be on some projects, I had better start getting ready now. Lava needs a proper shelter to deliver her babies in. I'd prefer her to deliver back in the new pig pasture, but since she is comfortable in the front pasture, maybe I'll leave her there and just move Shelly out back. 

Feeding Pigs - Fermented Banana Stalks

Homestead pigs ---- What to feed a full time pair of pigs? That's the question I'm working on. What can the homestead farm produce? While I do get some feed given to me, I don't want to rely upon commercial feed as a permanent crutch. And while I'm not yet totally committed to keeping Lava and Shelly as full time breeding pigs, I am heavily leaning in that direction. If those two stick around, I'm going to be hard pressed to feed them (and any future babies) in a self sustainable fashion. I don't wish to get back into the rut of depending upon commercial feed. So I've been researching my options. 

1- Use a larger pasture. . I definitely plan on this. The two pigs will be moved to a larger pasture where they can graze more grasses without depleting the pasture. I'm in the process of pig-proofing (is there such a thing?) a one acre pasture that previously was used for the sheep. 

2- Grow more feed. I've already got this in the works. I'm adding more banana trees as I have extra keikis. I'm planting more sweet potatoes and taro. Propagating more sugar cane, pipinola, and chaya.  

3- Expand into new feeding options, specifically, fermented banana stalks. 

"T" mentioned to me that he had heard of someone in Hilo doing an experiment in feeding pigs fermented bananas. Doing a bit of Internet research, I came upon several mentionings of chopping up banana trunks and fermenting them.  I haven't stumbled upon specific details yet, so I'm doing my own experimenting. 

Initially I cut up a small banana tree (just the truck, not the leaves and leaf stems yet) and sent it through the garbage disposal that I use to process chicken feed. It worked but was time consuming. I put this ground up banana stuff into a 5 gallon bucket and sealed it. After 7 days, I gave it the smell test. It looked fine and smelled sweetish, banana-y. Next, the taste test....not me!!  I mixed it 50-50 with the pigs' usual slop-n-glop and the they eagerly chowed it down. Bingo. I was onto something. 

Since grinding via the garbage disposal was too time consuming, I wondered if the pigs would eat it simply chopped up into sections not more than an inch wide. I had seen examples of this on the Internet. So I hacked down my next banana tree, chopped it up, stuffed it unto 5 gallon buckets, added water (I use rainwater) to completely fill the bucket, and sealed it with a lid, excluding all air. Left for 7 days in the shade, I opened one of the buckets. Looked and smelled fine, though not as sweetish. I guess the extra water diluted it. I could add sugar cane juice if needed, but that will be a future experiment. 

Above, hand slicing a piece of banana stalk. 

Above, what a sliced banana stalk looks like. 

Above, I'm making the slices 1" to 1/2" in thickness. 

Edibility test. Again I mixed these banana slivers half n half with the normal slop-n-glop. The pigs snarfed out the slop-n-glop and left the banana slices behind. During the day they returned off and on the eat some of the banana slices, but wasted about half of them. Not the reaction I was hoping for. But I persisted, hoping they would get use to the texture. No luck. Even after a week they were wasting about half the fermented banana slices. Not good. Back to the drawing board. 

Above, a full 5 gallon bucket ready for water and sealing. 

I know that they will eat fermented banana stalks, but the texture appears to be the issue. To prove that to myself, I put the rest of the slices through the garbage disposal. The pigs ate the ground stuff with no issues. Ah-ha, so it was the texture. They preferred ground to slices. 

One thing that I discovered by doing this was that the fermented slices went through the garbage disposal far quicker than fresh slices, plus they didn't clog the disposal at all. The fresh ones would would make a clog in the outlet pipe if I went too fast. So my thoughts are that I will ferment the banana slices first, grind them, then reseal them in buckets for further fermenting and storage.  

Next issue....cut the time and labor in cutting up the banana stalks. When I was experimenting I used a knife to cut the stalks. But that's labor and time intensive. So I'm now using my trusty sawsall. It cuts through the stalks like butter. Very quick. I can wack down, chop use, and seal in buckets a whole tree in minutes rather than close to an hour. 

The sawsall makes this whole idea workable. The plan is to....

...harvest the bananas

...cut the tree down 

...using the sawsall, chop up the entire stalk 

...ferment the pieces for 7-10 days

...run it through the garbage disposal 

...repack the buckets with the ground banana stalks. 

...continue to ferment until it is needed for feeding. 

Currently I'm only harvesting one banana bunch at a time. So chopping up the stalk won't be a big deal. If it's a small banana tree, I should get 3 days of pig feed out of it. A really big tree should yield a week's worth. In the next couple of weeks I'll see how accurate that prediction is. That's just a gut guess, so I could be far off on my estimate. 

ps- Since the chopped stalks get watered down in the 5 gallon buckets, I've decided to add some fresh cane juice. I plan to start using one large cane stalk of juice to one banana stalk and see how that turns out. I'll keep you posted. 

Pigs, Little Escape Artists

Young pigs are inquisitive. And they like to explore and travel. Add to that mix the instincts and urges of a feral pig, and I end up with piglets that are difficult to confine. My current piglets are mostly feral, with a bit of domestic tossed in somewhere in the background. So they are active and frequently find ways to escape their roomy pen. 

Escape methods--

...though the fence. When they were tiny, some figured out how to jump through the openings in the fence. The lower foot  of fencing wires were too closely spaced for them to push through, but further up the wires were spaced further apart, enough for a small pig to get through. So for the first couple of weeks, I was able to identify which were the clever piglets of the group. But it didn't take long for them to grow too big to make it out. 

...under the fence. These piglets like to root up the ground, and along the fenceline is their favorite place. It didn't take the smart ones long to figure out how to pull up the bottom wires, permanently bending them enough to be able to shimmy under. So I had to strategically place large rocks and logs to keep them from escaping this way. I've considered running a couple strands of barbed wire along the bottom of the fence, but I haven't gotten to it yet. They're not escaping frequently enough to motivate me to do that job, not yet. 

...between the fence and rock wall. I have a t-post fairly close to where the fence meets the rock wall, but there's a couple inches of space.....a gap. Again it was the smartest one who discovered the gap and worked it. When the pigs finally grew larger and heavier, they were able to pull the t-post away from the rock wall enough to squeeze through. So I had to brace the t-post to prevent them from pulling it aside. 

.,.via the gate. Gates are often the weak point of an enclosure. Mine proved to be weak. The gate was fine as long as the piglets were small. Now that they have put on weight, they now have enough heft to challenge the gate. Twice now they've managed to break the hinges, and once they popped the latch. Now I've replaced those with heavier hinges and clasp. 

Since most of my pigs are escapers, I take four steps that I believe are super important and help me control my pigs. 

...don't jet them run out of food and get hungry. A hungry pig will go looking for food. 

...make friends with your piglet. I like my pigs to come to me for rubbing. I brush their backs. I offer them treats. I encourage them to follow me around their enclosure. 

...train them to come. Every time I feed them I call them. Before long they will come running anytime they hear peeeg, peeeg, peeeg. So when they get loose, I can call and they will come running out of the woods. 

...find out their favorite to-die-for food. With every pig I've raised thus far it has been dry dog food kibbles. So once a week I offer them a bucket of dry dog food out of a white bucket. Now anytime they see the white bucket and hear the kibble rattling, they come running. They get rewarded with their favorite treat. 

...train the farm dog to herd. You can't use a hyper excited or running dog around loose pigs. So I trained Crusty to follow loose pigs at a bit of a distance. He walks behind, keeping a quiet presence. But the pigs are very aware that he is there. Although they are use to him hanging around and even playing with him, they some how are aware that he is herding them rather than his usual play. Having Crusty there encourages them not to back track while I am leading them back to their pen. 

Why Cook Pig Food?

Why cook pig food? This question was raised on a permaculture forum. I felt that I wanted to reply. In addition, "L" emailed that he/she noticed the slop the pigs were eating in my last photo, and asked what it was made of. So in response to the questions, ...........

Cooking pig food is something I do. But why, you ask? Why not just pour the pellets into the feed hopper as is? First of all, I don't use commercial pig pellets in this farm, nor much in the way of commercial feed. Thus I need to take a few steps in preparing the pig food. 

Some foods I don't cook. Foods that the pigs like "as is" include many fresh fruits, old bread, milk that is beginning to turn bad, stale cereal, leftovers from my own meals, stale beer and other drinks. And haycubes, which I soak in water but don't cook. (I don't buy these, but am given a bag or two occasionally because they got touched with mold and were no longer safe to feed to horses.) But other things I do indeed cook for a variety of reasons. 

#1- cooked food is more digestible. It's a known fact in the hog industry that heat treated feed is somewhat more digestible, resulting in faster and greater weight gain. Some cattle feedlots also steam treat their grains to improve and shorten finishing time for their cattle. Thus cooking pig feed = better weight gain. 

#2- cooked food is often more palatable.  There are foods that my pigs turn down when raw, but readily eat when cooked. I find the exact same situation with myself. While I don't like raw onions, I adore cooked ones. So cooking means that the pigs waste less. In fact, there isn't much they won't eat once it's cooked.

#3- cooking kills bacteria and fungi growing on the food. While food grown on my own farm appears to be "clean" from the various food poisoning forms of E. coli (etc), outside foods might be contaminated. Thus cooking off-farm food sources will help prevent introducing dangerous organisms into my own farm livestock. It's not a 100% guaranteed protection, but it helps (sort of like washing your hands to prevent bringing diseases and parasite eggs to your dinner plate). 

#4- cooking prevents bringing in diseases and parasites that could be transmitted to humans, which could sometimes be found in off-farm waste foods. I often collect waste foods. It comes from local restaurants, stores, and friends. I don't know how that food was previously handled. Dropped on the floor? Contaminated by commercial meat liquids? Coughed or spit in? Food half eaten by unknown persons, that is, scrapings off restaurant plates? Were those people sick? I can't naively assume that everyone is disease and parasite free, thus I cook slop to prevent passing these problems onto my pigs. So anything that has the potential to carry a problem gets cooked. 

On this farm, I use a wood fired rocket stove to cook livestock food. If I only have a little stuff to cook, I'll use a large soup pot. But for larger volumes I use an old jumbo pot big enough to fit a large Thanksgiving Day turkey. In fact, that's exactly what I'm using -- discarded turkey fryer pots. I've acquired several over the years. They're perfect for the task. 

Most foods heading to become Mom's Famous Slop & Glop get ground up before cooking. It makes cooking time shorter, plus the pigs clean it up better (that is, less waste). Ground up food makes mixing the slop with the haycubes easier. When I first started out making slop for a few chickens, then later, one pig, I used a blender. I'd cook the foods first then blenderize it. But that became time and labor consuming as the number of chickens (and pigs) increased. So I switched to using a garbage disposal which I set up in my outdoor processing area. The disposal discharges out to a strainer set atop a five gallon bucket. Crude but it does the job. I keep thinking I should make an easier system to use, but it's not high on my priority list. 

Pig Update

Not all that long ago we had 7 little piggies running around here. Well, they're not so little anymore. Plus their numbers now are down to 4. As the piglets are growing in size, so is their ability to pack in the food. These four pigs now eat three times as much as the 7 use to, and I'm ready to up the daily fare by another bucketful. 

A neighbor asked me the other day why one would "harvest" a piglet when it was still small. Why not allow them to grow larger, say to 200 lbs. There can be a few reasons that I can think of off the top of my head.

...a small pig is needed to fit the barbecue unit for a roasted spit pig. 

...a whole piglet is being prepared for a special luau, thus it needs to fit whatever space it is being allowed. 

...a home slaughter/butcher can only physically handle a small sized pig. 

...one's freezer only has space for a small pig.

...or in my case, when you run out of food. I only have a limited amount of feed available, so rather than starve 7 piglets, I keep the number of piglets that I have food for, and the others have to go one way or the other. (Two were sold as breeders and one went into the freezer to provide food for Adam). 

I'm at my max for producing pig food without buying commercial pig chow. Boy! can these critters eat! Luckily they eat just about everything that is considered garden waste, plus plenty of grass. As you can see in the photo, the pig pastures consist of two grassed pens about 150' by 100' or maybe a bit larger. They rotate between the pens to prevent the pigs from totally destroying the areas. This time of year the grass is growing really fast, fast enough to keep up with the pigs appetites. 

Just this week I was given four bags of haycubes that were touched with mold, so these are being added to the pig food menu. This will help extend the time before another piglet will need to leave the pack. 

 

Above, this was their first taste of slop with 25% soaked haycubes added. They resoundingly approved, cleaning up three troughs of it before lunchtime, grunting as they gobbled. Greedy little guys.