Alaskan
Herd Master
Yum!Around our area, I’ve seen litters of feral crossed with a Hampshire. Somebody’s Hampshire got loose and is busy improving the local feral hogs.![]()
![Drool :drool :drool](/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/droolin.gif)
Yum!Around our area, I’ve seen litters of feral crossed with a Hampshire. Somebody’s Hampshire got loose and is busy improving the local feral hogs.![]()
I'm in 4H, but I get attached to my animals very easily. I might feel better if the pig was sent somewhere nice where it could live its life, but in 4H auctions you can't control where they go. That's why I'd be keeping itHogs are one of the species that will become feral very quickly. When young they will return to the pen to eat but as soon as they find they can root enough food for themselves they will be gone. Neighbors will shoot them as a nuisance. Remember Old Yeller when the boy had to go mark his hogs. Those were free range hogs. They quickly become very wild and very dangerous.
You need to read up about "free range" rules too. Are you calling it free range to turn it out in the goat pen? In which case you will eventually have a rooted up goat pen. Or free range allowing it to range anywhere it wants? In which case you are looking at neighbor problems.
When I lived in Europe farmers would pasture their hogs with cattle. But that was on large acreage. Yo can also use hogs to uproot brush and stumps in fields as farmers used to do before planting a newly cut forest pasture to turn it into a field for planting.
Hogs root. Keep yours in its pen. It will enjoy coming over to have its back scratched. It will enjoy being hosed off in the hot summer.
Personally I would join 4-H and combine your Boy Scout Animal Science Patch project with a Fair Market Hog 4-H project. Raise it to Fair weight, show it and auction it off for $$$. Win, win.
I've heard of people used to cattle helping someone move load hogs and killing them with a cattle hot shot.NO NO NO to any type of "e - collar" ... A hog does not do well at all with electric shocks.... it can kill them. You have to be careful with using an electric prod on them sometimes. You would never keep it on a hogs neck anyway.
We free roam our goats. They know to stay around and don't wander off. Jimmy, the brown one in my profile pic, went into the neighborhood once, but the other in my profile, Snickerdoodle, was still adjusting to not being the only goat and chased him off. If I got a sheep it would stay with the goats. Plus, they'd probably be more accepting as they are both used to being with other animals.Around here if people do both they do rotational grazing which would require for you to have another sheep pasture, then switch pastures later. You could easily separate the minerals that way, but you need the other pasture.