HappyDay: ‘Adding Pigs to the Small Farm’

Casey O’Neill is a cannabis and food farmer in Mendocino County who has been writing newsletters about his efforts to provide sustainable produce and marijuana. We feature his column once a week.

     We’re closing in on slaughter day for one of the three little pigs, who are no longer so little.  Hammy, Arnold and Ms. Piggy are Kunekunes that arrived as piglets on the farm in the fall.  We’ve been feeding and caring for them through the winter and enjoying our time with them.  You may already know this, but pigs like to eat.  What you may not know is that they love belly scritchin’s.

      Caring for livestock adds a level of responsibility to a farm.  Animals will frustrate you in ways that crops never will, but they will also make you smile and bring you joy that vegetables can’t reproduce.  There is a depth of relationship in animal husbandry that is represented in the term.  To husband is to care for another out of love, to service and steward unto that being.

      There is a sacredness to the raising of livestock that we strive to hold and honor.  We want animals to be able to express their innate needs in managed ways that help to improve the land over time.  The nourishment that they provide to our family is life for us, fundamental and unvarnished.

      The taking of life is no easy task, no small thing.  Death makes us look without flinching at the route to our sustenance, holding that responsibility as part and parcel of the comfort that the future meals will offer.  It is our goal to provide as well for the animals in our care as they will provide for us, a cycle of energetics that we serve in life.

      This is the first time we’ve raised pigs during the cold months, and balancing their need for exercise and stimulation with the needs of the land has been a learning experience.  During the drier periods we let the pigs out during the day to scavenge for acorns underneath the oaks.  Sometimes we’ll hang out with them, moving them as needed away from sensitive areas.  Most of the time though we herd them into fence paddocks using the electrified hog netting to keep them enclosed where we want them to be.

      Pigs love acorns with the strength of evolution.  Watching them crack the nut in their teeth and roll it around to separate the meat from the shell is a pleasure unto itself.  They spit out the husk and move on to search for the next morsel.  The same is true for walnuts, strong pig teeth and jaws making short work of the hard shell.

      When the pigs have eaten all of the acorns from an area, they’ll start to root and dig looking for ones that they’ve missed.  We try to watch their actions and impact and move the fencing to the next location before they start rooting deeper than the leafy duff layer.  We’re also utilizing them to incorporate some of that duff to the upper soil profile, which will encourage decomposition and will reduce some of the dry surface material to add defensible space in preparation for fire season.

       The setup on these new-breed electric netting systems is simple and elegant.   The mobile charger comes self-contained with the battery and has two spikes on its bottom that stick into the soil for stability and to serve as the electrical ground for the unit.  This is a significant improvement over previous portable models which had a single copper nail that we had a hard time getting to stay grounded with the extreme dryness of our soil in the summer.

     During the dry season it helps to dump a bucket of water where the ground hits the soil because the moisture is important for the electrical conductivity that allows the magic to happen.  The unit is a pulse charger, which sends out electric current every couple of seconds.  Because it’s not continuous current.

      Training the pigs to understand the fencing is critical, because if they choose to, they can run right through/under it.  Pigs have a transmission that is forward-go and they have a very hard time with reverse.  Their tendency to keep their noses low and operate like a front-end loader without a backup mode means that if something startles them they go forward hard and fast, using the nose to lift up and get under obstacles.

        Pigs are durable, thick-skinned animals, but their noses are soft, moist and tender.  In order to train them to the electric netting, you want them to experience the shock out on the tip of their noses so it makes them shy away.  If they get under the fence enough that they get the shock farther back on their thicker skin, they’ll just bull underneath it and escape.

      When we first train the pigs to the fencing we’ll put down some grain right next to the netting so that they’re sniffing slowly and encounter the fence in a way that startles them.  They try for the grain a second time and hit the fence, and that’s all it takes.  Pigs are smart, they’ll remember that the fence is hot and steer clear of it.  They’re smart though, so after a while they’ll also test it out again to see if it’s still hot.

      The pulse from the fence is uncomfortable when it hits you, but so long as you aren’t grounded (like touching a metal fencepost while also touching the electric netting), it isn’t painful.  Electricity running through you is a strange feeling that leaves you rattled and uncomfortable for a second but isn’t otherwise a significant effect.

      Training the pigs to the electric netting means that we can have them out hunting for acorns and move them along the landscape.  Kunekunes don’t root as much as other kinds of pigs, but we have had a few spots where they did more digging than I would have preferred.  We’ll use straw and seed to cover the bare spots, and over time we’ll see the landscape become more rich and bountiful with the occasional disturbance of animals.

       Moving the enclosures for livestock is one of the roles on our farm that has taken time and effort to develop.  We learn and get better at the process each season as we continue to acquire infrastructure to make the work more smooth.  The last decade of poultry rotations have created a visible richness that contrasts with the unpastured areas.

       Animals, like humans, can be a benefit or a detriment to the landscape.  Our goals are to use grazing and pasturing to allow animals to express their natures, raise high-quality nourishment, and build soil and water holding capacity in the pasture.  We want the landscape to thrive because of our interactions with it, and we want the cycle of good energy to support us in our efforts.  As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!