I have a pig. Well, I have several…but this conversation is about my boar. The girls have figured out if they tip their water bowl then there is no more water until the next refill! Him? Nope, just means now he gets a mud hole and he knows sooner or later he’ll get a refill. It’s hot..I get it…he likes mud! But, he needs clean water too…. And yes, he does have toys (dog balls, a tire on a rope to shove around, etc) so no he does not need a bucket toy.
This is the pig, eating off his…you guessed it…turned over food bowl. Yes, normally I flip it back over but this time he re flipped it just as I was pouring the food in…so he got a tray instead of a bowl. That’s a problem for another day.
So when I walked out to this…his water bucket thrown completely across the pen right into his favorite manure corner…a mudhole complete with hoofprints where his water should be…I decided it was time to try something else.
Prior to this, I have tried multiple different dishes from rubber to hard plastic to oil pans (new of course). I tried putting a brick in the middle of the dishes. I tried the dish in every area of the pen. I tried the bucket, including putting a brick in it. He’s pretty strong and more determined than a brick apparently!
Here is the next idea- it entails is making a ring around the bucket tied to the outside of the pen for the bucket to sit into. I then plan on adding a clip and clipping the handle to the side of the pen as well.
This is the wire, it’s fence wire from Tractor Supply (and I’m almost out!):
And this is what I mean by a loop that the bucket sits into. I was afraid he wouldn’t be able to reach into the bucket since it’s slightly off the ground, so I put a failed water dish (complete with brick!) as a step next to it. After taking this picture, he walked up from the other side and stuck half his head in the bucket so the step was not needed after all :).
How is it working? Well, I forgot the clip the first time. The bucket was thrown across the pen yet again. I put the clip on from the inside, clipping the handle to the thick pen wire…he trotted over as soon as I shut the pen door and started mouthing the clip attempting to take it off. Back into the mud pit (sigh) and I retrieved the clip. Clipped the bucket on it from the outside and so far it’s surviving the assaults!
