And this little piggy went...

In one of our last posts, I wrote about our boar finding a new home.  He was a very calm, gentle boar that was REALLY large and due to wanting to add new gilts to the group, we had to get a different boar to do the breeding.  We were sad to see him go, as many people and websites will tell you that boars will kill their young and that you need to keep them away from piglets.  In the past, our piglets, which early on find out they can escape the fence, always went into the adjacent boar's "bachelor pasture" or "pig cave" and was often found sleeping in a heap on the boar.  So this year we didn't bother separating the boar from the piglets as we knew he would never bother them.  And he never disappointed.  He never fought with the piglets for food or even pushed them away like the sows would do, he was just a laid back kind of boar and gave us great litters. 

Now we have a new Berkshire boar, just like the one we relocated, and he is just a little guy.  He won't be breeding until this winter, which is exactly what we want since we do not want piglets in the frigid winter temperatures.  So for now we are working to get this little guy big enough to let him in with the ladies as they can easily throw their weight around.  We need him to be able to hold his own against our girls.  He is a picture of our little man when he arrived:

Speaking of throwing their weight around, Dave drove around the farm taking care of the animals one day about two weeks ago and found one of our blacks sows running towards the vehicle.  It took a second to register that something wasn't right just as another sow came running out of the pasture across the drive from where the pigs were fenced...or supposed to be fenced.  It appears as though the sows were either pushing and shoving each other getting to the mud pit, or even using the gate as an itching post and their large size just bent the clip wide open.  The gate released open and they decided to see if the grass was greener on the other side.  They easily followed Dave back in their pasture, eager to see what goodies he had and Dave fixed the gate.  Now two weeks later, pigs are still getting out of the fence, but it is not the sows...our piglets have found out that they can slip under the bottom strand of fence.  They are far enough back on the property that they cannot get into any trouble other than from their momma if they disappear for too long.  Luckily, as soon as they hear someone driving up they run back into their pasture to the safety of their mother.  Here is a picture of the clip after the sows were done with it:

And speaking of little piggies...here is the cutest one on the farm: