Will My Piglets Go Feral? (Releasing Pigs into the Woods)

Today is gonna be one of the more nerve-wracking days on the farm. You see, I'm getting ready to take my little piglets here, and I'm gonna release them out into the woods out that-a-way. And there's a high risk of something going wrong here. And particularly after all the problems I had when I first brought these pigs here... Hey, hey, hey! Oh, no, no, no, no, no! No, no, no! Really bad. That's... Come on, you guys. Go back down that way. Uh-oh. I'm gonna need you guys to wish me luck here. Hey, little pigs, you guys ready? Let's do this. So the way I raise pigs is on pasture. So I typically will give them about two weeks living inside a relatively small pen where they can learn to fear and respect electric wire. But once they've gone through that training period, I usually open up the fence, and I let them roam, and they get to be pigs that run through pasture and forest all summer. Back up, back up. Back, back, back. All right, be free. I got foods for you. Come on, guys. Come on out. It's okay. I took down the fence. You can come through. Got a fresh trough of food, and you haven't eaten all morning, so I know you're hungry. This is always the really awkward part because, in my mind, they're gonna just come sprinting right through, but every time I try to move pigs and I open them up to a new area, they're always a little bit nervous and cautious, and they kind of sniff around, and it takes them a few minutes before they actually figure out that it's okay for them to leave. Come on, little ones. Come on. Scoot, scoot, scoot. Come on. At this point in the game, they usually think these buckets, these orange buckets, contain food, which they usually do. I don't know. Maybe I'll entice them to come through here with this bucket. What do you think, guys? Huh? Come on. So the reason why I'm a little nervous and trying to rush them through is I have to close off the fence line for this portion right here. So basically, there's gonna be a line of fence that runs from here to here, and I want to get them through and get them going into that space. But I also don't want them to panic, and I want them to have a good experience with this and go slowly, and so we're just gonna take our time and watch some pigs. I bet you didn't know this, but pigs love to eat grass. It makes them so happy. I wonder if I move their shelter, if they'll maybe start moving. Come on, guys. Come on. Prince Philip, you're getting aggressive there, buddy. Come on. Follow me. Follow me. It's funny. They're, like, swarming me whenever I go in there, but then they won't follow me when I come back out. I don't know. We'll just keep giving them a few minutes. Let's see if I can entice them with some actual grain. Come here. You know, one comment I have received on some of my videos when I talk about raising pigs in the woods and letting them run loose around the farm is that when I do that, I'm actually creating feral pigs. A huge pack of feral hogs ravaging the landscape in the middle of the night. Like, by doing something like this, these pigs are gonna escape, and then they're gonna go feral. And the truth of the matter is, particularly for this breed of pig, even if they were to escape, I don't think they would necessarily survive and thrive through the summer. I think they'd be fine in the warm months. But once we start to get our heavy snow, I think it would be very tough for them to get enough calories to survive, because these pigs, they don't hibernate, they don't have a dormant period like other animals that are around here that survive the winter. And yes, while the hogs of Canada can be terrifying, they're actually a different breed of animal, and very different than these domestic pigs, who are basically a durock breed of pig. And so while they could do a little bit of habitat damage over the course of the summer, and they would definitely be an invasive species, the idea of a colony of pigs establishing themselves in these parts, I don't think is highly likely. Like, if you look at feral pig populations, and what that looks like across the United States, what you're gonna find is heavy concentrations in the southern region of the country, and a little bit in the western region of the country, but all in places that have a relatively cool and mild winter, so that those pigs can find sources of nutrition throughout that period of time. That's what those feral hogs have been able to thrive on and grow on. And while I definitely see the feral pig populations as a major problem in the United States, and really bad ecologically, I don't think these little guys are gonna be contributing to that problem, even if they were to escape. And I don't even think they are gonna escape. Because the reality is, I've fenced in about three acres or so, kind of all up and down this hill through the woods, and so they have, I don't know, maybe about a half an acre that they have that's exposed to pasture, and has, like, the grasses like this. But then there's about two and a half acres that's, like, woods. And particularly in the summer months, that's where these pigs just thrive, and they'll be super, super happy. And that doesn't mean that I don't feed them either, because I'll still be feeding them brewer's grains with a little bit of pig feed mixed in, as well as all sorts of vegetable waste. When it's apple season, they'll be getting apple drops. When it's acorn season, they'll be getting acorn drops. And so they'll get a lot of various sources of nutrition that I'll provide them, and that'll be what I use to fatten them up. But at the same time, part of what they're going to really enjoy is being able to work this entire landscape. And you can actually see this area down here was filled with pigs last summer, and they did such a good job of clearing it out and extending what we have as pasture. I'm going to be doing something very similar throughout this area over here, and so I'm excited about that. But of course, I'm still waiting on these pigs to kind of keep moving here. You know, it's funny, I actually skipped feeding them this morning because I thought it would make this easier, but no, they're so happy to just keep munching on grass that they're not even rushing to the grain or any of the other good stuff that we have growing out here. So in case you're wondering, all of these pigs do have names. If you look at that dark one in the back, his name is Prince Philip. The girl, who is actually the one right next to Prince Philip, that pink one, her name is Penelope. The one in the back there, his name is Percy. And then the one in the front, his name is Sir Porkington. So you got Prince Philip, Penelope, Percy, Prince Porkington. My wife is the one who gives them the names. Why are you biting me? Don't bite me. Come on. Why don't you come with me? Come on. Are you going to find the grain that I have stashed here? Come on. These pigs do have just so much joy. It's really nice to see. They're so happy just rummage around, digging at grass, being little pigs. Like that's, I don't know, that makes me happy. Even though they're going to ultimately be raised for me, making sure that they can have a good life is rather important to me. Hey, get out of my way. Get out of my way. I'm going to try to move this. Excuse me. Get out of your house. I'm trying to move your house. Come on. Oh, no. I don't have any animals to blame on that one. I was the one who knocked over the camera. You guys don't want to leave your house, huh? Oh, I see what happened. So when I pulled up their house, it unearthed some earthworms and they're eating the earthworms and my boots. Sir Porkington, stop eating my boots. Come on, man. Don't eat my boots. You know, the irony of this is the first, I don't know, three or four hours they were here on this farm, I was chasing them and I couldn't get them inside this pen. Now, roughly two weeks later, I can't get them out of this pen and it's kind of hysterical. Excuse me, Sir Porkington. All right, now I'm taking your food straw too. Excuse me, guys. Excuse me. Sir Porkington, stop trying to eat my feet. Come on, let's go. Let's go. Come on. They just don't want to leave. So you can see right here, I have two strands of electric poly wire set in the ground. This is what keeps them from escaping and keeps them from turning into feral hogs. It's like a one joule, 9,000 kilovolt charge that we have going here, which believe me, if you get hit with that, you're going to feel it and you're going to know you got shocked with it, which for pigs you do have to do because they tend to test the fence, I don't know, every two or three times a day. I find like they don't do it a lot. Like when they first get into the situation, they're doing it constantly. Once they get trained to it, they will still test it like two or three times a day, though, at least in my experience. But of course, once they're trained to an area, they just might not want to leave that area. And in case you're wondering, for fans of the 20 Teens mobile game Angry Birds, yeah, it's pretty much Angry Birds that still exist on our farm, where we still have some chickens living over there. All the other birds are out to pasture. Then you got the pigs over here. Come on, come on, let's go. Come on, come on, pigs. Come with me. Come on. I was hoping they would follow. They just don't want to leave. OK, so this is officially good news. We've got all four piglets in their new area getting settled. You can see they're all exploring and digging, running around. I think they're going to have a lot of fun in here. Now that I've got the fence all closed up, let me give you guys a little tour and show you what we got going on here, because I think it's pretty cool. It runs in through here, goes back almost all the way to our stream, and then it runs all the way up into that space up there. There's like an old rock wall that they can climb around and run around. There's all sorts of stuff that they can dig into. There's mud. There's brush. I've actually gone through here and basically cut the path for this fence. This whole area in here, this is pig central. This is the pig habitat for the next few months. Actually, I should say the next month, because there's another part of this that they'll have access to that I'll open them up to on the other side in about a month from now. Basically, each month I'll move them to a new spot, but I really want them to disrupt and disturb this whole area and really take their time, because I want to turn this ultimately back into pasture instead of woods and scrub. It's funny, I haven't heard anybody shock themselves yet, but that'll probably happen in the not-too-distant future. They've got so much to explore that, I don't know, maybe they won't do it for a while because they won't even need to test the fence, even though I think Percy might be getting dangerously close over there. We'll see. They are fence-trained, so they do kind of understand what that wire means. Prince Philip, why were you being so difficult, huh, buddy? I'll let you keep exploring and enjoying your space. We'll check back with you later. All right, it's now the next day, and Pablo Barncat's here to greet me. What's up, buddy? Are you looking at all these kitchen scraps that I have that potentially the pigs might eat this morning? Sorry, but this is not Pablo food. I will admit, last night when I went to sleep, I was a little nervous to see what I would see when I came out here this morning. Hopefully I don't have pigs running around the farm. That would be a bad thing. Good morning, large white farm dogs. How are you guys doing? Hey, guys. Come on out. Come out and say hi. Hi, hi, hi, hi. Good to see you. Hi. Hi, hi, hi, hi. By the way, for a very limited time, we have these Toby Dog and Abby Dog farm dog T-shirts available, so you can check them out, and the link's down below, and maybe something will pop up right here. Morning, pigs. How's it going, guys? Got some scraps for you. How's everybody doing, huh? Did you enjoy your first night in the woods? Did you go exploring at all? I'll get you some more food in a couple minutes here. But it seems like everybody's doing really well out here, and knock on wood, this should be how things go for the rest of the summer. Are you excited, boys and girls? Is this good? Huh?