A few pictures not used in the blog but still nice 🙂
All images (c) Susan L. Marsh. Reproduction or sharing prohibited without permission.
Tag: pig
I walked outside and noticed a slight problem…instead of pigs in their pen, I had goats in the pig pen??? And not a pig in sight! Below are the caprine (goat) culprits, Molly still inside and Bambi already chased out. Seems the goats have figured out how to shove hard on the pig pen gate and slide through.
But….where are the pigs???
I went back to the site of the original crime and not only had they gotten out in the same spot, they made it bigger and pushed the post I had in several feet away. Talent!
But…still no guilty looking pigs…until I walked over to the side of the main area and found these two. One contentedly making herself a digging zone and one pretending she belonged out. Looking on from the door of their pen are Bambi and Lizzy (for once, Lizzy didn’t cause any problems). Sigh….
So, once again utilizing magical objects aka pig treats…I lured the girls back to their pen.
This time…I put in a piece of cattle panel in front of the tree stump and wired it to the sides. They are strong but so far not strong enough to bend a cattle panel. Means they lost a foot off that side of the pen though… once the weather cools off I’ll be working on a new area for them that’s bigger.
Badddd piggies!
Came home and found the female pigs waiting for me at the animal area gate…NOT where they were supposed to be.
So I utilized my animal superior kung fu…yea…I got a couple of treats and proceeded to lure them back into the pen. I figured I’d go out of sight for a minute and they’d head right back to however they got out.
It worked! Only took about…oh…a minute for them to head into the corner…behind a stump…under a tree…and look..they pushed out the bottom of the fence. First picture is the two guilty parties after I came out of hiding, second is the area they pushed. They didn’t even FIT behind the stump so I’m not sure what magic they used!
I decided to fill in the hole and add a pole there (not pictured) and hope they wouldn’t try again.
Just kidding…pretty sure no matter how much pineapple you feed a pig it’ll still taste like pork.
Besides, these two aren’t destined fir the table. I plan on them being my breeding stock. They are quite funny at times!
Still working on keeping this guy from dehydrating himself. Bucket is now clipped onto the ring …although he’s already chewed the clip open once!
But look at this face…how can anyone get mad at it?!?!?! He’s lucky he’s cute!
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!
It looks like clumped together balls…at least when they decide to eat most of the oat seed you sowed as groundcover.
Hopefully the new section of fencing stops this issue!