Hey Eddie, look what I got!

[goeduck]

Peccary - Wikipedia

 

[STx]

I just posted my suggestion on your page. Hamilton always makes me laugh a little with the word Ham in the beginning for a pig.


From what I understand, Javelina are not pigs. They are their own species and unable to cross breed. Saying that, there are no native pig species to North America. I watched a show about hogs on National Geographic Channel and they said that a domestic hog, with floppy ears, curled tail and not hair will actually change it's DNA when it's set free, or escapes into the wild. It's ears will stand up, it's tail will straighten and it will become covered in hair. I forget exactly how long this takes, but it's fairly quickly. Maybe a year or two. I just find that to be amazing!!!!

They'll go completely feral in a single generation. Pigs are incredibly smart and resilient.

Javelina are definitely distinct, I've read that they are more closely related to a hippo than a pig. I can't remember where but, it was a credible source.

Here's a picture my wife took of our javelina at the feeder one afternoon. They have horrible eyesight so it's very easy to sneak up on them. I enjoy watching them, they're neat animals with a complex social order. Interestingly, they are very matriarchal, if you remove the dominant female in a group, it almost always leads to herd collapse.

 

[STx]

Wouldn't let me put the photo in the other post.

 

[EddieWalker]

That's cool. I've never personally seen a live Javelina in the wild. I've thought about hunting them just to add one to my collection, but it's pretty low on my list. Do the rut up the ground like the wild hogs do?

 

[STx]

The worst we get from them are armadillo type divots. Our soil doesn't have much clay so a good rain will often fill them back in. Since they're native, they're adapted to the environment and do very little damage. They help keep the prickly pear under control and keep some of the underbrush cleared down very low. Full grown, they're only about 45 pounds.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

The smell is really a problem of overcrowding or not rotating them frequently enough. I had none when I could move them with the hotwire. The last 2 months I've had to keep them in a real pen and while it's large for 2 pigs, it is starting to have some odor on hot days. They've also rooted it badly. Once they're gone, I'm going to disc and rake it to level it out again. It'll be a great garden plot next year.

My experience is that spots where pigs have been don't make good gardens. The pigs eat everything in the soil that is organic, and compact it. What's left becomes rock hard and impervious to water, you get puddles on the surface. But maybe I'm just growing the wrong things, certain weeds grow extremely well where the pigs have been. If I leave a spot alone the weeds will be six feet tall by the end of the summer. What's tough is the pigs leave the ground so rutted that it's hard to mow.

 

[DMax82]

So how big will this dude get?

 

[STx]

500+ pounds. It depends a lot on what breed genetics are in him. Some are smaller than others.

 

[Luke'sScreenName]

My aunt did this a couple of times in Atascosa Co with three trapped piglets each time. There was a barbeque place down there that would buy the meat.

 

[STx]

Vicious little guy...

 

[MacLawn]

I know absolutely nothing about pigs, horses, cattle, etc., just dogs and cats. But a local feed store owner says, "If you want to become a millionaire, buy horses and give them away."

 

[Tractor Seabee]

I haven't given up on pigs yet.
We have a 5 acre pasture that we're going to divide into 10 1/2 acre paddocks with hotwire. We'll rotate them into a new paddock every 3-4 weeks with a central wallow, food, water and shelter area. )

I raised hogs as a 4H project during my teen years (long ago) when living in the Phoenix AZ area. We did not allow them to generate wallows, had them on pasture, and penned them up when watering the pasture. There was little odor that way as they all defecate in a small area and I kept that up like the cow pens at one big manure pile. In the summer I had a loafing shed with concrete floor and an overhead spray system. There was a separate area for sows to birth and raise the sucklings. That is where their feed and water was also. Easy to keep clean and it drained away from them. They loved that spray when it got hot. For a teenager I made a lot of money, most popular kid on the block. My operation was a 4H demonstration place on how to raise pigs.

Ron

 

[STx]

So, this little pig is mean. It's been a couple of weeks almost and he'll eat out of my hand but then turn around and hook it, trying to literally bite the hand that feeds him. I don't know if he's going to make it or not. I castrated him this week so hopefully he'll mellow out as the testosterone leaves the body. If not, he's got until he hits about 50 pounds, at that point he'll be too big to safely deal with mean and he'll be whole roast pig on the grill, complete with an apple in his mouth. I hope it doesn't come to that but, I just don't have room for aggressive animals on my place. In fact, I had to cull my head rooster earlier this week because he just couldn't get it through his head that attacking people wasn't OK. He jumped over some hens to try to spur me in the face while I was giving treats to the hens, it was the last straw.

 

[TractorGuy]

Did you decide on a name?

I can't imagine why a wild boar that got captured and had his nuts cut out would be mean.

 

[goeduck]

Did you decide on a name?

I can't imagine why a wild boar that got captured and had his nuts cut out would be mean.

Maybe he knew his nuts were be going to be cut and was going to get his licks in beforehand. Can you blame him? . I bet he settles out now and is sleeping at the foot of the bed before long.

 

[STx]

Did you decide on a name?

I can't imagine why a wild boar that got captured and had his nuts cut out would be mean.

We're calling him The Kernel when he's nice, a-hole most of the time.

 

[Redlands Okie]

Be careful on the name calling deal. Had a cat one time whose name was Sam or something. I finally noticed he only responded to “Dammit” since he heard it directed to him so much.

 

[EddieWalker]

Neighbor caught a baby wild hog and thought he would raise it like I did with Oscar. His kids loved on him all the time, but even after getting him cut, he could never be trusted, so after about a year, they let him go. We saw him from time to time, he'd just walk out of the brush like he didn't care anybody was there, and walk right past you. I never felt right shooting him, and eventually he just wondered off. I haven't seen him in a few years and forgot all about it. I've been told by other people through FB that they also tried raising one as a pet, but it was too destructive, or aggressive. But I have no idea what they did, or how much time they spent with those hogs. With my neighbor, he kept it in a pen about 50x50 feet, away from the house. I don't think he or his kids interacted with it enough to bond. They where here on weekends, and not every weekend. He worked during the week, and I have my doubts about how much time he spent with the pig when he was home. Oscar got a lot of attention, was always around people from day one. That might be the difference.

We also have roosters and they are the devil. Of the dozen or so roosters we currently have, maybe three are great, the others are probably gonna end up in the crock pot sooner or later. I think two are going down this weekend. This year, I guess I've killed two dozen roosters. We are letting the broody hens sit on eggs and hatching them, so we've been getting a lot of new birds all year long, but mostly this past Spring. The same will happen next year when they hatch and grow up into monsters. That switch will turn in their heads and then it's time to die. Sad, because we really enjoy seeing them, and watching them wonder around the land.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

I raised hogs as a 4H project during my teen years (long ago) when living in the Phoenix AZ area. We did not allow them to generate wallows, had them on pasture, and penned them up when watering the pasture. There was little odor that way as they all defecate in a small area and I kept that up like the cow pens at one big manure pile. In the summer I had a loafing shed with concrete floor and an overhead spray system. There was a separate area for sows to birth and raise the sucklings. That is where their feed and water was also. Easy to keep clean and it drained away from them. They loved that spray when it got hot. For a teenager I made a lot of money, most popular kid on the block. My operation was a 4H demonstration place on how to raise pigs.

Ron

I raised a couple of Berkshire barrows to show for FFA; they were smart as all get out and as gentle and tame as a puppy. The loved to have their sides scratched, and were easy to train for show. They of course had their tusks removed, but they never ever showed signs of hostility.

 

[Bird]

I raised a couple of Berkshire barrows to show for FFA; they were smart as all get out and as gentle and tame as a puppy. The loved to have their sides scratched, and were easy to train for show. They of course had their tusks removed, but they never ever showed signs of hostility.

I was in the 4H club when I was raising Berkshires, first in Ardmore right where I-35 now crosses u.S. 70 and then just NE of Healdton, OK. I still have 16 ribbons I won, the first one a blue ribbon for a 300 pound barrow. Of course that was in the late '40s.:laughing:

We also have roosters and they are the devil.

I've posted this before on TBN, but I was 8 or 9 years old when we had a big old White Leghorn rooster that would attack me every chance he got. Dad thought it was funny, but told me to just grab his legs and dip him in the cows' water trough to break him of attacking me. So I did that; dipped him in the water and tossed him. But the next day he attacked again and that time I dipped him in the water and held him down in there and watched the bubbles for awhile. When I finally threw him as far as I could, he just landed in a heap and I first thought I'd killed him and knew Dad would be very mad. But then that old rooster started flopping around like a chicken with its head cut off, and finally got up and staggered off, much to my relief. But from that time on, that old rooster gave me a wide berth.