Pigs on Pasture

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Moving the Pigskins

Not football.  Pig’s skins.  (Dad’s pun)

Before we left for Florida I recognized that the pigs were reaching a point where they needed to move out to pasture.  They are not cramped in their chicken tractor but it’s time for them to go.  Besides, they may just climb out of it.  I built a new temporary shelter with pallets surrounded by straw bales, surrounded by hog panels and covered with tarp then filled the living space with waste hay the cows had stepped on and refused.  I surrounded this with Premier One Pig QuikFence.  Since the pigs were only around 50 pounds I thought I would just carry them to the new pasture.  Unfortunately I ran out of time.

When I came home from Florida Sunday morning the pigs weighed at least 100 pounds.  Well, OK.  I’ll just do it anyway.  I picked up the first squealing, squirming monster and the other two came to its defense biting me on the leg.  You should see the bruise.

Once again, dad came to my rescue suggesting we just walk them back to the new pasture.  What a novel idea.  We stretched out the remaining three sections of pig quikfence as well as a length of garden fence and wired it to the 5 joule perimeter fence.  Then we opened the side of the tractor and …erm…negotiated the pigs into the fenced area.  We just strolled along as the pigs found their own way to the new pen.  Farmer 1:Pigs 0

MovingPigs1

MovingPigs2

MovingPigs3

MovingPigs4

Now, to get the cows in the barn for the evening I had to take the fence down so I had my son unplug the perimeter momentarily, closed up the pig pen and strung a new wire over to the fence.  We finished up chores and checked on the pigs again before heading inside for dinner and an early bedtime.

It could not have been easier to move the pigs.  Nothing went wrong at all.  Everything was perfect.

Then dad stopped by on his way back from the barn to tell me the pigs were out.  Worse, they were visiting the neighbor’s barn.  Ugh.  My fence wiring was at fault.  The wind blew and the ice-covered wiring lost the connection to the perimeter fence.  The pigs just walked over it and went on an adventure.  After some amount of coaxing with spoiled milk and old chicken soup, some work and serious praying the pigs are back in their pen in the garden.

Farmer 1: Pigs 1

We’ll try again on Tuesday.

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Swalerator…or…Outsmarted by the Wife Again

So I says to me wife, I says, “Honey, What  does this look like to you?”

And she says to me, she says, “Looks like the pigs dug a swale.”

And I says to her, I says, “Well I think it looks like the….pigs….du….oh.”

And so you see, kids, it’s a good idea, from the standpoint of your future genetic line, to marry someone both more attractive than you and, more importantly, more intelligent than you.  But in practice it sucks.  Not only does she run circles around me intellectually, everywhere we go people look at us like, “What’s SHE doing with HIM?”

So, while I work to determine how much of a swale I can hire the pigs to build for me on contour and sulk about being continually outsmarted by my lovely bride, here’s a video of the pigs enjoying fresh pasture.  Ever seen a pig eat grass?