Pigs.

Well here is a story I'm sure a few of you have been waiting for. We ordered 8 Berkshire wiener pigs late February from the only local couple who raised them. And it's a good thing we did! Pigs have been scarce this spring and every one is looking for wieners. Wieners are about 8 weeks old and 40 to 50 pound pigs. We actually got all females or gilts. Males are called barrows. One day mid May I made arraignments with the pig breeders to go and pick up the wieners the next night. The pigs, 5 sows (mama pigs) and their 25 offspring had the run of about 5 acres of bush/field and because they are getting out of the pig business they wanted to get the sows out of the area first. This makes for easier piglet handling. So the day before we went they had just shipped the 2 big sows out and gotten all the piglets into a small pen with a barn where they stayed until pickup. Because we ordered first we got first choice. Very nice. :) The 5 batches of piglets were all within 2 weeks so they were between 10 and 8 weeks old. Which explains the size difference a bit. Papa and I fussed a bit trying to figure out how we were going to get the pigs home. We normally use a couple of dog crates and haul them in the back of the travelall. But because we've never bought so many at once we knew they would not all fit. Last year we got 4 from one guy and 2 from another on different days so it wasn't a big deal. Well Papa had a great idea and it worked good too. :) The travelall is sort of like a suburban. But with about 5 feet behind the 2nd seat. The back is a tailgate with a window on the top. SO what we did was we cleaned out the back of the travelall. Put a tarp behind the kids carseats (between the car seat and the front of the seat) and tucked it in really well and then used the rest of the tarp as the floor. Then we just opened the window in the back and dropped the pigs in. We still have nose marks on the back windows. :) Now I have to admit when I first heard this idea a certain Patrick McMantis book came to mind. :) Something about pigs in sacks and pigs loose and looking over shoulders and a wild drive while trying to get wild pigs back in the sacks and ends with a cop in disbelief. Well thankfully that did not happen here. The pigs did try once to get into the back seat where the kids were but they gave it up when they realized they were surrounded. After that they just rushed around the back grunting and squealing all the way home.(Another picture missed sorry) The windows stayed half open all the way home as well... (but wonderfully the smell went out totally with the tarp)


Well we had the pen we wanted to put the pigs in set up beforehand. In fact we'd had chickens and sheep in it for several weeks. It was a electric netting fence around the area that the cow had used last winter for her hay area. We wanted them to till it up for us. Well we backed up to the pen, over the side of the fence and put the window down opened the tailgate and off they went. 123456 little piggies in the pen. I RAN to turn it on about the same time Bindy (the cow) realized that we had done it again!! The crazy humans are always bringing home stray critters that she disapproves of. PIGS. Bindy dislikes new critters and BOTH Papa and I realized later that we should have tied her up before hand. We also should have checked the fence. Unfortunately we did not. HEY chickens and sheep had already been in it!! Well it had also rained the whole night throughout the day before and left the posts in the clay a bit loose. Too loose. Much too loose. Bindy started to BAWL at the top of her lungs.. and she has good lungs. By this point the fence was on. I can run fast when needed :) 4 of the pigs hit the fence and decided that it hurt and they'd stay away from it. Another thing that we had not realized.. or maybe I had not realized was that these pigs had almost NO contact with humans at all their whole lives. And they'd had the run of 5 acres. Not just a little patch. The other two pigs hit the fence again and again until it flipped over and they raced under it... into the chicken pen. Also electric netting. Also a rained on fence. Chickens don't care. Pigs care!! Well we were settling the 4 down and watching them and trying to get Bindy to shut up.. she did eventually. She's almost as well behaved as some dogs when it comes to bawling. We're always yelling at her. Anyway we thought that the two escapees were in with the chickens and when we went to look for them they were GONE!!! Two black and white pigs off in the bush at 8pm. Good luck!! NOT!! Actually it was still light enough out that we searched for an hour and a half before giving up and going inside. Papa saw them twice in this 90 minutes. He also said that he was walking behind them and they would stop in the bush so quietly that he kept on walking right by and then they would turn and RUN away!! (it was almost dark) I didn't see them once. They were bush trained. Over the next week we realized how well. That night I called the people who own the patch of land that is behind our lease. I told them to be on the lookout. For all we knew they would keep on going. Our neighbor said she doubted they would last the night. Both Papa and I knew they would.


It was a relief the next morning when I went for a quick walkabout to hear pig grunting by my pond and when I peaked though the bush to see the piglets standing stock still in the middle of a bush road. They were so stealthily that they did not MOVE for several minutes waiting to see what I would do. I did nothing and went home happy they were alive and that we had a chance to get them back. When I got back to the house I called Papa at work to relieve his mind as well. Well now we knew where they were but now to get them home with their sisters. This same morning I got a phone call. They had our last two pigs ready for us. There was some muddling and it turned out we got all 8 of ours now instead of having to wait for the next batch to be ready. Better for us for sure. So I called Papa again at work and we made plans to go again that night and get the last 2 pigs. This time we used the dog crate and only Papa and J, L and E ended up going as the peat moss came the same night and I needed to be here for that. That trip was uneventful and the 2 new pigs (also gilts) settled right in inside the crate and they were asleep when they got home!! Papa put a pig in each arm and walked over to the pig pen. One of the two screamed almost the whole way and both Papa and I half wished that this would call the other two out of the bush. But it did not. The two new gilts settled right in and there was no problems at all. Bindy was tied up at the neighbors piece of grass; we do learn :P This batch of pigs was so wild that they huddled for almost 2 days in one area, running when ever we came within shouting distance. Not that we shouted.. just looked.


Well, over the next 24 hours we realized, with discreet checks, that the 2 bush pigs were not going anywhere. They stayed within a certain distance of where we assume they had found a hole in a slash pile to sleep in. We considered building a electric fence around them, dismissing this because of the noise the chain saw would have made while making a path around them to even get a fence up. The area where they were (yes we got them in) was part of our lease right behind our place. Marshy, wet, close to the pond for water and totally overgrown with 2 inch poplar trees and bush. To walk though this area it's step, step on a log, step, step on a log!! The whole way. There was NO way we could chase them so we decided to bait them. Papa got a bucket of milk and grain and I placed it close to the fence were they had found a hole. I checked this bucket 3 times that 1st day and it had not been touched. But the ground where I had seen them the 1st time was getting well tilled!! They had not been able to get to the area where the bucket was. I think it was too wet for them to walk through while thinking. They raced over it that 1st night but had better sense the next day. SO I moved the bucket. The next morning, day 2, they had eaten the grain off the ground in front of the bucket but not put their heads in the bucket. I moved it away from the fence a bit and checked it again later. Later they had again been there and this was the pattern for the next week!! By the end of the week they were emptying the bucket and only about 50 feet away from the pig pen. Beautiful!! Papa and I wondered why they weren't drawn to their siblings. We found out.


8 days after bringing them home Papa got the pigs in. We were moving the meat birds and doing evening chores when I noted out loud that 'the 2' were within 20 feet of the pig fence eating out of their bucket. Papa glanced over and finished chores. Well before I knew what he was about he had the pig fence moved around, singing softly the whole time, and before my very eyes he simply kept on singing and penned those 2 strays in!! He then asked me to feed the pigs in the pen, that had tamed down a lot that week. So I did found some really smelly slop and fed it. Then with me on the outside of the electric netting and Papa on the inside we tried for almost 40 minutes to get 'those 2' to cross that line!!! We couldn't turn the fence on and leave them because it was sided on one side with a hog wire fence and would just ground out. So we had to get them over with the other 6 so we could close the fence and turn it back on. Pigs are smart. These two remembered. They remembered that line (the fence was gone) and would NOT cross it. They could smell the food. They could see and smell their siblings less then 20 feet away (at times it was 1 foot away!!) but they would NOT cross that line. I told Papa afterwards that they are sure fence trained for never having been in one!! Finally I hopped in the fence as well and some of the 6 came over to investigate and after several tries 'the 2' finally followed the crowd and walked in to the pen. Papa and I controlled our need to panic to get the fence on and fixed the fence and when it was completed Papa RAN to turn it on and they've behaved themselves nicely ever since. And there you have it. The PIG story.

Update. The pigs are all fairly tame now. They are still in the same pen and still digging happily. They come to the fence now to see us when we go to see them :) And no longer rush away right away when we go in the pen. The '2' were a bit skinnier then the '6' but now we can't tell which ones are which. Yesterday when I fed them they came within touching distance of me. That's a 1st and a welcome sign. We are planing on breeding two of these pigs and will pick the best of the bunch this fall. There are 4 big ones (from one litter) 3 medium ones (could be from one or several litters) and one small one. They all have white feet and noses and some markings which is a Berkshire breed standard.


Bindy has forgiven us and has accepted the new arrivals. Sometimes I wonder who is the boss around here. Me or HER!!!