Share experience - piglets

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Thought I start a new post with something from another thread.

Hope this story about "movable hog pens" brings a chuckle, I sure wasn't at the time. Last Friday we brought home six LITTLE weaners. Stuffed them in a feed bag and away we went. Now, having done this before, I had put up a small pen around their house. A wood fence with a hot electric wire, fenced off the holes under the building and provided food and water. (I had not forgotten the first time we brought home feeder pigs, very wild feeder pigs, the electric fence was nothing and we chased all four. One took off and we never saw it again.) Well, the little guys were released from their bags, decided we weren't all bad, the scratching was appreciated, the food was OK and WOW! there was REAL dirt to root in! Life is Good! Weeellll, went out the next AM, wouldn't you know the hubby man followed me out, NO little pigs in the pen. He was sure they were in the cornfield across the road, never to be seen again. I told him to cool down, I'd heard noises behind the horse barn. Went to check, sure enough six piggies, on the lam, having a GOOD time. This was een BETTER than the pen! Well food is a great enticement and I caught one, the other five were real leery of me after hearing the alarm sounded. Thinking back to the greased pig contests I have seen I figured it was time to rethink my strategy. Hubby man suggested we build a fence around the little poopers. Sounded good to me, they were where I wanted to pasture them come cold weather anyways. Away he went to get the hog panels. So, the afternoon was spent building the fence around the little Houdinis (sp? That hole they went through was certainly small!). We put up the panelized building I had made last year. (It was put together with screws. Came apart and went back together OK.)The first time I have ever built a fence around the animals, talk about breech!

So far, they seem pretty happy. Was out scratching their ears and a belly tonight. They sure are cute, should taste good later! Will put up an electric fence on the inside of the hog panels, son drove the fence posts today. They are definitely temporary, far from being straight, that will drive the hubby man nuts. He doesn't go out there much though. Thank goodness you can't see them from the road, he'd divorce me.

Saturday was one of those days where I questioned most, if not all, of my reasons for having critters. Oh well.

-- TAB (burnash@gisco.net), August 13, 2001

Answers

The first pig I ever bought jump through a window in our milk house to freedom and broke the glass in doing so, he survived but it took my 2 days to catch him.

About 10 years ago I had half a dozen feeder pigs escape from a New Zealnd type 9 wire electric sheep fence and I did not see them for 6 weeks, they went off to my woods and rooted around near a swamp on the back of the farm. finally one morning I found them out in the barn where they had started out, I quickly closed the sliding door. They saved me 6 weeks worth of feed and dressed out @ 200-220# on schedule. when I was a kid in Florida, our pigs ran wild in the woods.

-- hendo (redgate@echoweb.net), August 14, 2001.


Listening to stories that my mom told me of when she was a little girl. She said the only fence they had was one that stretched just a few feet around the house and the barn to keep all the livestock out. She said everything ran loose on the range and all the animals always stuck around cause they knew that was where the main meal came from. She always said that back then nobody had their property fenced, and your closes neighbor lived no closer than a mile away, so you didn't have to worry about getting your livestock mixed up.

-- Russell Hays (rhays@sstelco.com), August 14, 2001.

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