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June 2006
Free Range Hogs
I am all for humane treatment of all animals, including livestock around the farm. So I was surprised when my hogs rebelled the other day. I thought I was treating them quite well – clean, plentiful water, room to roam, shade from the sun, fresh air in the great outdoors and ample feed in the self-feeders. What more could a growing hog ask for?
Evidently, it just wasn’t enough. I was up early, making coffee in the kitchen as the sun just started to peak out over the big hill east of our place. Looking out the kitchen window, just as I poured myself the first cup of freshly brewed coffee, a group of twenty hogs rambled quickly just under the window, looking like they had someplace to go.
I rushed out the front door just in time to see another twenty or so head down the driveway. I was surrounded. There were little groups of hogs everywhere. They were in the machine shed. They were running through the orchard. They were in the cattle yards. They were even wallowing under a shade tree in my wife’s flowerbeds. I wasn’t sure what to do first.
Trying not to panic, I ran over to the hog pen where my happy hogs were supposed to be. They had busted through a hog panel and only about five pigs remained in the pen. A bunch of them were digging down, resting in the shade of the hog barn, looking for some water. So I opened up the barn door and started fixing the panel where they had escaped. I started praying to the good Lord to lend a hand anytime. I figured the Good Shepherd might be a decent hog man too.
Just then my youngest daughter, Taylor came out of the house in her pajamas and flip-flops, yelling at the hogs to go back into the barn. I told her to stand near the machine shed and just stay quiet. About the time I got the fence fixed and the barn door open, a bunch of pigs ran out of the machine shed, took one look at my daughter standing there, and headed straight for the barn door back into the pen.
Slowly, Taylor and I coaxed other groups of escaped pigs back into the barn with some ground feed from the feeder. A few walked up to the door, looking for some water and a place to rest. We urged them quietly back into the pen and opened up the door for more roaming swine to enter.
It took us about an hour, but even the pigs that were heading up the driveway came back to their old pen eventually. We both walked back to the house, sweaty, thirsty, but overall, pretty satisfied with our roundup.
Having felt their wild oats, the hogs seem to be more content these days back in their pens. Just to be sure that they don’t decide to take another night out around the farm, I have reinforced the fencing. We also replanted my wife’s petunias. But the hogs should be forewarned that if they get out again and do damage to the garden or the flowerbeds, they should worry most about the wrath of my wife. We will sell no swine before their time, but another outing like that and a few of the organizers might get a quick ride to the sale barn.
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
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