Pigs raised in the woods

[holliehmstd]

We are new to homesteading and live on a large farm. Much of the acreage is farmed out so we are planning on raising pigs in the rear of the property, fenced in in the woods. I know that certain breeds like Tamworth and Duroc do well foraging for acorns and tubers on their own with additional feed and normal protection/housing/etc. But I am interested to see if anyone has experience doing this and would like to share.
Thanks!

[KimTN]

I keep my guinea hogs in the woods. That is natural habitat for a hog. I have a hardwood forest that provides tons of acorns. The hogs hunt for other stuff and love to chew apart downed trees for the delicious grubs inside. I feed a little corn to make them friendly, but otherwise, let them do their own piggy thing out in the woods. I run boars and sows together and the sows build their own nest for their babies. The boars protect the little pigs and sows from predators. I have more piglets than I can shake a stick at. I just trap the piglets when I notice them running in their own gang and eating feed, and sell them off by the truck load. Everyone is happy, including me.

[holliehmstd]

I have heard about guinea hogs, that they are the original homesteader's hog. I may have to take another look. What do your's finish out at? And how do you handle fencing them in?

[highlands]

Most pigs will do well foraging in the woods if there is enough food in them. A mix of pasture and woods is better, especially if the pasture has alfalfa, clover and other forages in addition to grasses. We raise about 400 pigs on pasture which is a mix of grasses, legumes, brush and forest. We also feed whey from a local creamery which adds the limiting amino-acid lysine to their diet as that is short on pasture. We also grow some veggies which are primarily a fall and winter feed.

Our pigs are a mix of Yorkshire, Berkshire, Large Black and a little Tamworth, Glouster Old Spot and such.

See: Pigs | Sugar Mountain Farm

[holliehmstd]

We are looking to get a Jersey cow next year, after we have established the pigs and some other poultry and water fowl. I plan on supplementing the chickens and pigs with whey since I know it is very beneficial to their diet. I was hoping to keep the pigs - when small - in a double dog pen that we do not use until they are large enough to go out into the woods with a 2-strand electric fence border and then just let them have at it. I want to start out with a breeding pair and a castrated male to fatten for fall butchering.

[KimTN]

The forest is difficult to fence, but we found those metal collars that allow you to make strong corners using only metal posts. You can find the kits at Tractor Supply. We have multiple strands of barbed wire as a physical barrier and several strands of hot wire on the inside, to keep the pigs from trying the fence. The idea is to keep wild hogs out and my hogs in.

Guinea hogs take a long time to grow out. They are small in comparison to most other hogs. It works for me because, I am the butcher and animal care giver around here and a small hog is easier for me to handle as a woman. I sometimes dress out the small pigs at 30 pounds. They make fabulous roasts. We are simply keeping the pigs for our meat production. Unfortunately, they breed so fast, I have to sell the pigs because I simply can't eat them fast enough. I am reducing my herd quite a bit, because I found out that I need fewer hogs than I first thought. If you want bigger pigs and faster growth, I suggest you go with some other type of pig.

[haypoint]

Do you live in an area with predators? Do you live in an area where Wild hogs are? When you say the pigs will be back from the house, in the woods, I think of their physical safety and Wild hogs can kill your pigs, breed them or pass pseudo rabies to them.
Do you mind if the pigs kill the trees?

[gerold]

I have Yorkshire. They spend most of their time in the woods. In warm weather they have pasture and woods. Sure cuts down on the feed bill.

[highlands]

We find the forest very easy to fence due to the proliferation of fence posts, a.k.a. trees. We drill in long heavy duty eye bolts into threes in sets of four to handle four wires. The trees are unmovable. High tension fence works great this way. We clear along the intended fence about four feet wide and put the wire in the middle of that. The animals then clear the fenced in area over time.

Fence Line Clearing | Sugar Mountain Farm

Regarding defenses against wild hogs I would suggest good hot strong fences coupled with a good sized pack of excellent livestock dogs. Ours know their own livestock and kill other livestock and wildstock that comes into our fields. The latter are dinner for our dogs be they predators, competition or pests. Word gets out in the forest and after a while the fools have been culled. Then the more respectful wild critters leave our animals alone and the dogs have thus successfully negotiated a truce.

[KimTN]

My boars have done a great job of keeping predators away. We are over run with coyotes. Our boars absolutely go crazy when they see a dog. We have not lost any piglets to anything. I have gone out at night and heard the boars fighting something in the woods. There were a lot of roars from boars and screams from something else. I did not want to venture back to check it out, because the boars can really get carried away sometimes. I do toss my large rabbits (dead ofcourse) to the boars and they toatlly demolish the carcase in seconds, so I'm sure that whatever they kill back there will not be around to identify after a few minutes.

[ONG2]

We lost a couple of piglets out in the woods this summer, also 2 of the survivors had a similar deep gash on their front right shoulder. I suspect hawks but don't know for a fact that that was our bandits.

[highlands]

Ravens and crows do that to piglets.

[holliehmstd]

Originally Posted by haypoint

Do you live in an area with predators? Do you live in an area where Wild hogs are? When you say the pigs will be back from the house, in the woods, I think of their physical safety and Wild hogs can kill your pigs, breed them or pass pseudo rabies to them.
Do you mind if the pigs kill the trees?

I am not concerned with predator issues at this point. The woods end in a clearing with a pond so we are mostly dealing with deer. Some neighbors have seen a fox here or there but we plan on housing the little pigs close to the house in a double dog pen and then move them to the woods once they are older. I want to breed for next year so I am going to let them fend for themselves as far as raising the piglets on their own once that happens and see how it goes. We have no wild hogs. We are in King William, VA and as far as I know, we are pretty good in this area.
Mostly predatory birds and the woods give good cover. There is a trail back to the pond and a small clearing once you enter the woods where we dump brush and stuff where we plan on putting bees so with all of the traffic, I think we should be okay. We do plan on getting dogs - since we had to get rid of our own chicken killer - but everything in it's time!

Oh and the trees, there are lots of dead trees and brush and all sorts of goodies back there. We have not explored it fully so when we add the fencing we will get a better idea.

[holliehmstd]

Originally Posted by highlands

We find the forest very easy to fence due to the proliferation of fence posts, a.k.a. trees.

Regarding defenses against wild hogs I would suggest good hot strong fences coupled with a good sized pack of excellent livestock dogs.

Great! I have some video of Joel Salatin talking about fencing in his hogs in the woods and he uses twine tied to the trees with a loop and runs hot 12.5 gauge aluminum wire. So I think that we are going to try that and see how it goes. We need something inexpensive and relatively flexible as far as creating additional areas to graze or move the hogs as an option.

We really need to get LSG dogs but are still trying to figure out what breed would be the best since we also plan on getting a cow and we have chickens/ducks and the like. The whole of the property is not fenced in so we have that to consider as well which makes choosing a dog a little more difficult.

[highlands]

Worry less about what breed of dog to get and more about getting dogs from working parents. It makes a big difference if the pups are raised to the job. Breed does not guarantee they'll have the right instincts but from working parents almost guarantees it because then you have the genetics and social structure.

[pancho]

For years we raised hogs in the woods. The only hogs we ever pen raised were a few meat hogs. We had 120 acres fenced where we ran our hogs. Really there was not many problems with predators. Hogs can usually handle most of them. We had more problems with people stealing them.

[miraclemant]

Shoot the thieves, there is a bounty on them! lol