cantankerous pig

Renze · Dec 29, 2006

Bird, about pigs being nasty, i meant that they are... well... they dont poop in their bedding area, but i meant that they will start eating you if you dont move....

In that big group of hogs, if one would cough (pneumonia) the others would stop with their ground sniffing and look in its direction. if it cough'd again, they would walk towards it and after a while you'd find them all biting into that one hog.

If you removed it from the pen and gave it some penicilin and a day or 3 to recover in the sick bay, it would be happy to go back in the big pen with 60 other animals, but if not, it would be bitten to death by its pal's

Bird · Dec 29, 2006

Renze, I'll take your word for it. I've heard of hogs killing and eating other animals, killing each other, etc. enough that I'm sure it's true. As a kid, I raised registered Berkshire hogs for the 4H club and I guess my hogs were just too gentle, and well fed. I'd heard that hogs would kill and eat snakes, so I once caught a 4' snake and put it in the pen with my uncle's hogs and they just ignored it. And my own pigs were kept in a large enough pen that they were never crowded. In fact, our chickens frequently got into the pen to eat some of the grain I put out for the hogs and we never had a hog attack a chicken. I did once make a bad mistake myself when I was about 12 years old. I had a sow with a new litter of pigs that were only a day or two old and she was gentle enough that I could get under the shed with her and play with the little ones. However, I put her feed out in a trough in the middle of the pen, and immediately had a bunch of chickens come for a share and that day I decided I didn't want the chickens to get any of it, so I got a stick and I was running circles around the old sow and the feed trough yelling and waving the stick to scare off the chickens while she ate. Not a very bright thing to do. It obviously made her nervous and she whirled around and knocked me down. Since I was already running, I had a little momentum, rolled, came up on my feet running, and barely beat her to the fence. That fence was low enough I was accustomed to running and jumping over it, but I was off stride and didn't have time to make any corrections that day. I didn't even try to jump; just ran full tilt into the fence, which hit me about waist high, and I flipped over and hit the ground on the other side so hard it knocked the wind out of me. You can bet I was very cautious around that sow for a couple of days.

jimmysisson · Dec 29, 2006

Bird THAT is a great hog story! Thanks!
Jim

Farwell · Dec 29, 2006

When I was in my very early teens my family lived on a farm in Michigan. We had approximately 200 pigs and never had any problem with any of them because we knew our limitations and never crossed them. We had a boar that could be a problem and if we had to feed him or deal with him in any way we were able to isolate him from us so we could do what needed to be done. I would use a 2 foot by 2 foot piece of plywood with a hand hold cut in it if we needed to get near any of the sows that were a little feisty.
I do not know why it happened but we let our young boars get a couple weeks older than we normally did before castration time. Talk about some good exercise.
I never thought of our pigs as being nasty. They were always well fed and treated well. We did not slaughter our own pigs, we would send them out to a butcher.
David B

Bird · Dec 29, 2006

David, when I was a kid in the 4H, pigs in the show ring at the fair and stock shows would occasionally get into fights. The men usually told the kids to not get between them because you could get hurt, but the grown men would usually break up the fights, most commonly by kicking them apart. Now many many years later, at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas, I noticed them using plywood as you mentioned. I think what they were using was 2' x 4' with two hand holds cut in them. Sure made me wonder why no one was smart enough to think of that when we were kids.

Egon · Dec 30, 2006

Farwell, I can still hear the squealing!

LBrown59 · Dec 30, 2006

Egon said:
Farwell, I can still hear the squealing!

So Can I

Farwell · Dec 30, 2006

Bird,
I was in the 4H for about 4 years and really enjoyed it. One year I entered a sow in the local county fair. Neither one of us had any experience in showman ship. The sow went where she wanted and I didn't have any idea on how to guide her. I ended up with a red ribbon and was told that if the sow was trained we would have had at least a blue ribbon.

Egon,
The sound of castrating pigs is a sound one will never forget. There is no sound like it in the world unless it was one of us.
David B

Bird · Dec 31, 2006

One year I entered a sow in the local county fair. Neither one of us had any experience in showman ship.

David, I sure understand that. I was very fortunate in being the exact opposite. Of course my Dad and Granddad helped a great deal, we got to be friends with the county extension agent at the time, and the first hog I showed was raised as a pet. In fact, I could ride him and guide him with a yardstick. So he won the blue ribbon for the Berkshire heavy weight class and I won the showmanship ribbon (still have it). There was just one problem. He was a barrow, so of course was sold at auction after the show, and it was really tough to hold back the tears when I walked away from him that night.