Moving Pigs

written by

posted on

May 7, 2024

Pigs are back on pasture at Polyface! Kept warm and snuggly all winter, we've returned our pigs to their usual home - the pigerator paddocks.

Pastured pigs are not only a lot of fun to raise, but the by-products of bacon, sausage, ham, and more make pigs well worth it. What all goes into raising pigs on pasture?

Our pig pastures are set up mainly in forest/silvopasture settings.

We run one or two strands of wire at the height of the pigs’ noses. Pigs don’t have great eyesight so the wire needs to be easy for them to see and kept at a high voltage. This means we often trim around the paddocks to keep the wires free from overgrowth and tall grass. In each paddock, there is a “doorway” to the next paddock which is closed with wooden gates. Pigs have an easier time moving from paddock to paddock through the wooden gates because they can see it better and can tell when it's open.

When we go to move the pigs, we drive out to the pasture with a tractor hooked up to a feed buggy. After letting ourselves into the paddock, we open the gate to the next paddock, scoop up their feeder with the tractor (we time the moves so that it is empty now), bring it to their new pasture, and fill it with fresh feed. All of our feed is non-GMO whole grain feed milled at a local farm and tested for glyphosate residue.

While we do this task, we drain the pigs' water tank (which is simply connected to our gravity-fed water system) and enjoy watching the pigs explore their new setting.

During the fall, the pigs enjoy rooting through leaves and crunching on acorns; in the spring and summer, they enjoy the fresh grass and greens that each paddock offers. And if they are lucky, they will find or make some mud!

After the water drinker has been drained and moved (usually we tip this and roll it over the electric wires to the next paddock) and we have moved the tractor out of the new paddock we look for any last pigs that haven't moved yet and coax them to join their friends in the new space. Then we close the wooden gates again and electrify the fence. We then head back to park the tractor and feed buggy, leaving the pigs to enjoy their best life!

Polyface does not farrow (breed/birth) our own pigs but we buy weaned pigs from some other great farmers around us.

When we get new piglets, we keep them in a barn pen for a few weeks where they can be trained to electric fencing. Once the pigs are big enough to be out on pasture and are trained to the wire, we load them up deliver them to their pasture paradise.

After months of feasting on good feed and enjoying their roomy forested paddocks, when our pigs are “finished” and ready for the butcher, part of our team goes to “yeehaw” them down the mountain and back to the barn. (It sounds far more exciting and high energy than it is.) Carrying a stick or “sort-board” (lightweight plastic boards with handles) we gently herd them out of their paddock and down the gravel farm-road. Just don’t let the pigs get the best of you! To herd pigs, much patience and quiet coaxing are required to make the pigs think it's THEIR idea to go the way you want them to go.

Our pigs spend most of their time out on pasture but, in the cold of winter, when the pigs are bedded down in a hoop house or barn, we spread old hay over their bedding about once a week to freshen things up and give them something to play with and cozy up in. In the spring, the pigs also work for us in the barns, stirring the bedding (pigaerating) and turning the cows' manure into rich compost. As you can see, the Polyface pigs play lots of roles here on the farm!

I hope this has given you a small glimpse of the work and joy of raising pigs! If you're ever near Swoope, VA, come visit the pigs yourself and see them in real time - living their best piggy lives!

Priscilla

All Related

Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year--that's a lot of stuff going on kind of lumped together. Which brings me to my thought this month: it's all related. Perhaps the signature difference between Polyface and current mainline food thinking is integration versus segregation. I could use numerous words to describe this basic concept, like parts versus wholes, but I think these two are as good as any. Conventional industrial food systems break things apart. We see it on farms that grow only one or two things, without regard for the greater inter-relatedness of ecology, all the way up to packaged and processed food. Modern processed foods don't use whole ingredients; they use pieces of things. They strip out the germ of the wheat, for example. They refine things to the point that the food bears no resemblance to its natural state. Then they put all these pieces together and call it food. But these pieces came from widely divergent places, and the beautiful unprocessed original no longer exists. When Dad and I were brainstorming what to call this farm venture that would eventually become Polyface, Dad's assumption was that we'd call it Salatin Inc.--you know, like Ford Motor Company or Chrysler (named for Walter P. Chrysler, the founder). I was adamant that it NOT be our family name for two reasons. First, I suggested there may be a day when a Salatin isn't at the helm. Secondly, I wanted the name to recognize integrated thinking. I came up with the name "Interface Inc." to recognize the three great environments: water, land, and forest. For 20 years, during what I call our experimental homesteading days, we'd been planting trees, fencing out riparian zones, fencing out the forest to protect it from cows, and developing a landscape plan with these various zones in mind. The State Corporation Commission rejected the name because, unbeknownst to us, Virginia already had an "Interface Inc." It was a labor arbitration company to work out disagreements between labor and management. I was milking the cow when Dad told me the bad news, and I spontaneously blurted: "If we can't be Interface, let's be Polyface--the farm of many faces." Dad laughed, but we both liked the idea, and it stuck and was approved. The point here is that from the outset, all our thinking was about how to leverage the various assets of the diversified ecosystem and then harness the distinctives of the various animals. As a result, we looked at symbiotic natural patterns and have done our best to duplicate them. The Eggmobile follows the cows so the chickens can scratch through cow pies. We use pigs to aerate compost. Our small flock of sheep is like a glorified weed eater, cleaning up fence lines and around farm buildings to reduce mowing. The animals move through the pastures, paddock to paddock; they don't stay in the same place. Illustrative of "conventional-think", Virginia Tech veterinary professors who judged my son Daniel's 4-H talk titled "Symbiosis and Synergy in the Racken (Rabbit-Chicken) House" at the state contest nearly 30 years ago couldn't restrain their skepticism. "Aren't you concerned about diseases with two species that close to each other?" I was never so proud. He was about 15 and, without batting an eye, looked those professors in the eye and replied: "We've learned that most pathogens don't cross-speciate." Folks, I had not prepped him for that question. When he responded like that, those three professors slapped their legs and laughed at the audacious notion. They had no further comments and immediately tried to recruit him to enroll at Virginia Tech and major in Veterinary Science. Instead, he stayed with me on the farm and scaled up these simple integrated relationships to the thousands of animals we have now--with virtually no vet bills. Meanwhile, conventional experts wring their hands over bird flu, screw worm, African swine fever, blackleg, and a host of maladies that attack places where an integrated approach toward biology is severely lacking. Pediatrician Dr. Sharon Goldfield, director of population health for the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, wrote a fascinating op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week titled "Baby Food and Youth Obesity." She slammed "packaged baby and toddler foods" because they fail even rudimentary nutrition standards. Their surveys indicated that "80 percent of children are eating packaged toddler foods, many of which are ultra-processed, from an early age, with 43 percent of them eating these foods at least five days a week." Kids are eating out of boxes and slurping from concoctions created by a segregated mentality from field to stomach. This segregated thinking even permeates parental decision making, divorcing overall health from food and assuming whatever happens, pharmaceuticals can fix it. At Polyface, everything we do assumes that everything we do affects something else we do. It's that simple. Both land health and people health occur when we realize everything relates to everything. You can't just eat well and not exercise. You can't dismiss the value of sunlight on your skin; especially early morning sunlight. Hydration. Sleep. Stress. Forgiveness. Gratitude. It's all part of us. As we celebrate all these holiday times and imagine the relatedness of Thanksgiving with the Christmas story with the eagerness of a new year, imagine all the things going on in your life and how they work together. Or how if you pull them apart, things fray. Be assured that here at Polyface we're trying to integrate ecology, people, and economy in an overall symbiotic whole to deliver you the best food at a reasonable price. And we thank you for helping us build an integrated whole that respects earthworms all the way to our dinner plate and microbiome. We're not feeding you earthworms, but be assured they play an ongoing role in every bite you enjoy from Polyface. Thank you. Joel