Electric hotwire on the inside of field fence. Easy peasy!
As with before we staked out the electric to make sure we had enough wire. We just re-used the wire and push in posts from when this was the goat grazing area. We had plenty.
The meadow before. This used to be heavily treed.
Then we pounded in the 6 1/2 foot tposts. I always think they are so expensive but Tractor Supply had them for less than $4 each. The other day I bought 10 of them - we only needed 5 in addition to the posts that were down there.
Happy pig in his new yard.
Next we measured how much field fence we needed. It was about 100 ft to cover this new section. The new fence section connected with the line of fence we set up a couple years ago. All we were doing was closing in the yard. I stood on the tail end of the fence roll and my husband unrolled it down the drive way. When he got to mark in the drive that indicated 100ft he used bolt cutters to clip the fence and voila!
Then it was just a matter of lugging the fence down the hill and stringing it up along the posts. That's all the time we had for that day. But the next morning me and the dogs made sure the electric hotwire was close to the field fence line, added an electric gate connector, and tested the fence. It worked!
No fancy gate needed.
To our mind a gate is really just a break in the fenceline. Some folks scoff at our "gates" thinking they need to be some kind of expensive, fancy, prefab thing... but a short section of hog panel works just fine as the "door" to the actual gateway.
Once we confirmed, again, that the electric fence was live, we opened the gate where the pigz were standing around watching us.... and lured them in with corn and goat milk.
There is always that one guy that just doesn't understand how the gate works. GO AROUND! Pigz.
The pigz started looking around and thought this new place was great. I think they loved the tall grass and bramble. Then, you know, this happened. *sigh*
My big idea was to put a lot of corn around the ground hog hole so the pigz would dig it out.
Yesterday the pigz figured out that there is the new and wonderful place called "The Woods." Part of their new yard is down the in cool and heavily treed part of the property. Now they have given up on the meadow and my clever plan to get them to dig out the ground hog... and the pigz are all about the woods.
This project to move the pigz, yard by yard, down to the woods has been a terrific success.
Happy Sunday everyone! Did your pigz find the woods?
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2 comments:
you got oaks in dem woods?Fatten'emup on acorns!
By comparison our pig paddocks are quite small to yours, so you do well by your pigs. We do have woodland, and we had intended to get the pigs to run in it, but after two winters of serious flooding when the entire woodland became part of the river, we changed our minds. But we have sectioned off three paddocks in the back field next to the veg plot, and when the fencing is finished, that is where the pigs can go during the day. Lester has talked about getting more pigs. I am not sure where we are supposed to put them though! Hope your pigs settle down quickly - it looks like they have done just that already. Vx
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