This morning we were faced with the daunting task of catching all of the piglets for sale. Having done this a few weeks ago for castration, we knew it wouldn't be the easiest thing to do, but I had had some luck baiting them with food so we tried that first.
I poured a pile of food outside of the pens and squatted nearby waiting for the piglets to come to eat. When they did, I slowly reached over to them and grabbed one by the front leg. Immediately, I swung it around and grabbed a hind leg. Remember, these piglets weigh a good 40 pounds and are ALL muscle. J then grabbed the piglet from me and put it into a cage.
This only worked once. The piglets figured out way too quickly that they would be caught if they came anywhere near the food. So we had to try another plan.
We gave Jaws (daddy pig) a bowl of food and tried to sneak up behind the piglets from there. Jaws doesn't really care if there are squealing piglets around him so we knew we'd be safe with him. We caught one more that way before the piglets high-tailed it back to the pen with their momma.
Now, we knew that we couldn't go in and catch piglets with Ruby. She was already very upset that we were chasing her babies - barking and frothing back and forth in her pen. So we decided to move her into the goat pen so that we could safely catch the babies in her pen. She moved easily enough with the promise of a nice full bucket of grain.
Once she was out of the pen, we decided to barricade the babies into their shelter. When they were all in the shelter, we pushed a large table in front of the entry and thus had them contained. We then sent K and Z inside the shelter to catch babies. We knew that they wouldn't be able to hold a piglet for long, so we had them yell if they caught one.
Well, Z decided pretty quickly that he was not comfortable in a small shelter with a half dozen upset piglets. He needed out. As we let him out, the piglets ran out too. We were able to catch one more that way before they were all back in with Jaws.
Finally, we blocked a corner behind the chicken coop and ran the piglets into the corner. J was able to catch two this way, but after he handed the piglet over the fence to me, there was an immediate change of plans.
Up until this point, Ruby had been pretty happy with eating her food. Maybe it was the sound of two piglets squealing at once. Whatever it was, the next thing I heard was J yelling that I needed to get in the car (we were loading piglets into a crate in the back of the car). I glanced over at the goat pen and Ruby was destroying the fence, pushing over two pallets and the milking stand, and making a b-line for me and the squealing baby.
The kids jumped up onto the shelter roof, J climbed up onto anther shelter, I dropped the piglet in the back of the car and climbed into the front seat and closed the door just as Ruby made her way around to me. She was running, barking, frothing, and generally menacing. She made her way around the car, and finding no piglets, she moved on to the outdoor crate we had put the other piglets in.
Once she was satisfied that the babies weren't being hurt, she found the duck pool and decided to take a dip. We had one more piglet to catch, so I handed J a small crate so that he could put the piglet directly into the crate without leaving the relative safety of Jaws' pen. The minute that piglet squealed, Ruby was at the fence line. We quickly placed the piglet in the crate and she quieted down. We were able to load the piglet into the car without incident.
Ruby was still pretty upset, so we gave her some more feed and left the gate open to her pen. When I looked out about 20 minutes later, she had knocked over the pig grain bucket and was eating to her heart's content. Honestly, I know she won't eat enough to make herself sick. And honestly, I'm not willing to go out there and shoo her away from the feed. I've had enough close encounters of the porcine kind today.
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