Pigs are funny creatures. They're smart, but toddler smart. So while they understand that touching the fence is painful, only one of them seems to understand that she can walk over the fence when it's on the ground.
My ultimate goal is to get permanent fencing up in the back pasture that divides the space into 10-15 smaller paddocks. By limiting where the animals can go, I can imitate the mob grazing pressures of wild herds, where a space would be eaten down quickly and then left to rest for weeks or months. Research has shown significant improvements in soil health, soil fertility and biomass production when animals are mob grazed. And with improvements in soil health, I can either increase the stocking density by adding more animals or decrease the amount of feed I bring in because the animals will get more nutrients from the pastures.
But until I get that fencing in (i.e., save up enough money to purchase said fencing), the chickens have free reign of the entire space and the pigs have been rotated every 4-6 weeks using electric fencing. And that's worked fairly well, until last week.
I moved the fencing on Sunday evening. Only Cardi P moved with the fencing.
On Monday I tried coaxing them in with food, and managed to shock Piggy Gaga.
On Tuesday I spent an hour chasing them away from the chicken feed in hopes of getting them hungry enough to cross the fence line.
On Wednesday they refused to cross the fence, so I spent another hour trying to keep them from eating chicken feed.
On Thursday I turned off the fence and tried to lift it across the pond while Piggy Gaga and Justin Boarber were lounging. I succeeded in freaking them out, and thus spent another hour trying to keep them from eating chicken feed.
Note that during this process, the chickens are Not. Amused. As is shown by the distinct drop in egg production dating to the attempted moving of the pigs.
On Friday I took a lasso and attempted to drag Piggy and Justin into the new enclosure. They proceeded to drag me all over the pasture, and dislocate 9 joints before the end of the process. We ended up with four people holding the lasso rope in a C shape to force each pig towards a section of fence laid on the ground with food on the other side, and then literally pushing them across the line.
On Saturday I found Piggy outside the enclosure again, and I'm ashamed to admit that I took the business end of a shovel and forced her back in with a few well placed smacks.
Sunday and today they've stayed inside, and I've been regaining trust with regular applications of spent brewers grains and damaged peaches. I also went to my chiropractor and got all those joints popped back into place!
Needless to say, proper fencing back there has moved to the top of the priority list. Right under "buy seed for fall crops".
