Good news.. Our first test for raising pigs at the foothill property is going amazingly well! The first 11 pigs spent their last 2 weeks rooting around and gaining weight in the pen. They are visibly larger, happy, healthy, never escaped the electric, and are consuming about half their diet in bugs and grass.
We decided to move another set over, another 20 pigs on various sizes. For now we simply expanded the existing pen. Tomorrow we will split the herd into two pens by size.
The ground is done... 80%is well tilled and eaten. The math involved is... 11 small pigs, pen 150 to 180ft per side, 2 weeks. Moved now followed by a little flattening should mean even better ground recovery. Any more time and it will be overdone.
So now there are 31 pigs. We loaded the 20 in about an hour and a half. Still room for improvement in the loading pen. Pigs like corners... They feel safe stuck in a corner "hiding", so I want to use that to make loading easier. Soon wet will pay pictures of the arrangements we ended up with.
For containment at foothill we are using 3 stands of electric rope on a solar charger. Plastic step in posts at 6 paces each. The original pen had our special wooden portable corners, the new one is t posts with porcelain insulators. Still working on making that part easier.
When this is settled we will be publishing our containment and moving system for pastured heritage pigs. We have learned a lot... But still a ways to go.
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