Very carefully!!! And with plenty of treats. Today I had to move boars around to different pastures. I needed to take Redbeard, our senior boar into the barn and then I had to take our youngest boar, "7 of 9" (yes, that is his name. We are Trekies here!!) and put him out in a pasture of sows. Generally we try to move pigs around when there are several people around to help out. One to open gates and to keep the rest of the pigs in the fields where they belong, someone to trail treats at the front end of the pig and someone to push from the hind end if needed. Today all I had was just little old me.. No helpers, no emergency bodies in case things went wrong.. just me, the hogs, and my bucket of bread.
Bread, you say? Yep, bread... The hogs love a little bit of bread for a treat. We always try to keep a few loaves around in the barn for just special occasions like today. So.. I grabbed my bucket of already opened bread (it must be unwrapped already or it will take to long to get into it, and you will loose your pig!), then I grabbed my "emergency hog moving tool", which is a plastic manure fork, and I set out for Redbeard's home pasture.
It was a bit tricky getting RB (Redbeard) isolated away from his ladies. They like bread too, so if they knew that I had it, they would be all over me for treats too. I got lucky and RB was off by himself somewhat.. So I used my fork to act as a portable barrier and walked him to the corner gate. No worries about me using a fork on him. We don't use the forks for pokers, but instead we use them as a quick visual barrier up by the pig's head. If you put up "walls" where you don't want the pig to go he will go the other direction. With quick reflexes and a light enough "tool", you can have your "walls" jump from side to side and the pig meanders in just the direction you want him to go. Most of the time, that is. Occasionally they decide that the fork isn't wall enough and they just go where they want to go. Luck was with me today. Redbeard went where I wanted him to go, into the garden.
Once he was out of the pasture and into the garden, I put the gate up behind me and ran to the front end of him. Once there, I started tossing tiny bits of bread in front of his nose. He'd eat one and then see me toss the next one, so he's move forward a few feet and eat the next.. You have to be "johnny on the spot with the bread", not to far apart, not to slow to get the next one out (or they'll wander off), not too big of a piece (or they stand there and chew).. and if they get full because you forgot to move the pig before you fed him dinner, you are out of luck for easy pig moving, and not to small of a piece (or they can't see it when you toss it) and so on and so on. Bread tossing is an art here on the farm.. In this manner we traveled through the garden, down the driveway, through the barnyard and into his new temporary digs. There he recieved a small pile of bread and a bed of fresh straw..
Whew!! One down, one to go.
7 is our youngest boar and we have decided to give him a group of sows of his own. He is a lively hog that moves very quickly and is easily distracted by whatever catches his fancy. Again luck was on my side, 7 was standing by his gate. Of course Jackson (the next bigger boar) was also there and as soon as the bred sows heard me rattle the gate chain they come running out.. I managed to get 7 out the gate, while the other 3 pigs were distracted with a scoop full of grain scattered about. Now I had 7 standing on the driveway alone. He needed to go back up the drive, through the garden and into one of our other pastures. Lucky for me, 7 loves to eat (he is a pig after all!), so as long as I was able to keep those bread crumbs coming quickly he was happy to follow me. Its a good thing to because he runs much faster then me and if I had had to "push" him with my fork, he would likely have just gone for a sprint and I would have been out of luck.
5 minutes later, 7 was in the field with his new ladies and I was feeling pretty darned smug about how well it all went. I checked "boar moving" off my "to do" list and went on to the next task. My smugness was short lived when a little bit into the next task, I was startled by " a huge pig loose in the barn yard". Not that big of a deal, as he was just calmly grazing the winter grass, but still a pain none the less because I really didn't have time to be chasing pigs. It turns out that Redbeard got bored in his barn house and he put his nose under a rung of his gate and pushed it up off its gate pins. Stuff like that is a piece of cake for a hog, they are built for lifting things up with their noses. I put him back, fixed the gate, tried to jury rig a quick solution (pretend hotwire across the gate) and went back to my list.
An hour passed. It was then dusk, things were getting dark and I was finished with my chores when I saw a shadow running up the driveway (headed for his old pasture and his own bed!). Shoot.. he is out again! This time I had no bread close by, but I did have my fork, so I grabbed it and herded him back to his barn house. Reluctantly he went in and went to lay in his bed, staring at the wall, pouting no doubt.. He was also likely plotting to escape again as soon as I left his sight. I needed a solution quickly to this problem. It would not do to have him roaming at liberty all night long. Hmmmmmm.. Ah Ha! The tractor bucket. I ran and I do mean ran up to the house to get the tractor. Darned if I was going to give him time to get out again. I drove the tractor back and put the bucket on top of the gate, pushing it down tight to the ground. I bent the top rung of the gate a tiny bit, but I think he will find it impossible to escape tonight. We'll get him a new pasture built this weekend if the ground thaws out enough to allow post pounding.
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