Welcome to Piggsville, pop 6

[Stonehead]

Wow, didn't notice the fencing. Did you put that in with a setsquare?

Thanks all. Although I can't take credit for the view!

The trick to the fencing is to start with a straight baseline and then use the rule of 3, 4, 5.

You put your corner post in and a marker when the end of the baseline fence will end. Join the corner post and the marker with a taut stringline.

Measure three measurement units in (can be feet, metres, yards - it doesn't matter so long as you stick to the same unit) from the post and tie a piece of string to the line.

To set the next fence line at right angles to the first corner post, start by tying another stringline to the corner post and have an assistant unwind it until they're roughly at the end point. Have them pull the string taut and tie a piece of string four measurements out from the post.

The use a rod, plank, ruler or tape measure to measure from the first piece of knotted string to the second. Get your assistant to walk back and forth until the measurement from knot one to knot two is exactly five measurements.

Then get your assistant to push in a stake at the right place, tie the string off and then double-check the measurements.

Why 3, 4, 5? It's easiest Pythagorean triangle to remember - the length of the diagonal (5) is the square root of the first side (3) squared plus the second side (4) squared.

It's also known as the Egyptian string trick as it's how they measured and squared up their fields.

You can also have fun and by a bit mystical about it - playing up your earthy, hippy, green credentials to credulous tourists. Isis the earth goddess lays horizontal, Osiris who rose from the dead is erect (!) and their son Horus is the result that ties them together...

[hedgewizard]

Ooh, ankh f n Asar!

[Boots]

Am heaps impressed Stoney... don't get the 3,4,5 thing at all... but it's a brilliant job! What sort of wire is that?... Can't see properly... Does it have wrapped joins or is it spot welded? And what have you done at the base to stop them lifting it up?

[Stonehead]

In the main, it's a seven-wire high-tension fence (2.5mm high-tensile)with four live electric wires (9.6kv) and three non-live.

There's a non-live kicker wire at the bottom to force their snouts up, then a live wire, then non-live, live, non-live, live and live.

With sheep, goats and cattle, I'd take the posts out to 4-6 metre intervals, but with pigs I put in three-inch round posts at 2m intervals. Round posts are stronger as the grain isn't cut, but as they're bent and warped they can be difficult to get looking neat. (Star pickets aren't used over here.)

I use insulated ratchet strainers on the live wires, as this allows me to ease the tension in winter and ratchet it up again in summer to allow for effects of heat on the wire. The non-live wires are tensioned with a chain strainer.

The strainer posts are sunk into the ground for one-third of their length, have a anti-turn bar set into the side at the bottom (so they don't rotate under strain) and are are coated with bitumen below ground level to help reduce rot.

I sit a large boulder at the bottom of the strainer, on the side opposite the strain, and then backfill with rammed stones and dirt (and sometimes with postcrete to one-third of the depth if the sides of the hole are loose).

Each strainer then has a strut, pointing in the direction of the strain, with the foot resting against an anchor driven 30 inches into the ground. This could still move in soft ground, so you then join the strut to the strainer with wire, creating a very strong triangle (strainer, strut, wire).

For really soft ground or when straining long sections of fence, I'd use a box strainer or even a double box strainer. However, there's not much point using this for pens as you end up with rows of box strainers and no intermediate posts!

Over and above the seven-wire fence, the boar pen and the training pens also have C8/80/15 netting on the opposite sides of the fence to the live wires. This is fixed with barbed staples and, while not vital, pays off when you have piglets (who will jump through the wires as often as they go back) and Tamworths (our boar constantly checks to see if the electric fence is live and when it's off, immediately starts digging into the fence line).

The netting has also proved its worth when a gilt decided she didn't like the boar and tried to make a run through the fence. The combination of netting and high-tensile wires worked like a trampoline and bounced her back while the lives wires also gave her a good shock. She hasn't challenged the fence since!

More details on my blog at:

Still fencing

Back to the fencing

More fencing gets underway

Hope nobody minds the shameless link to the blog, but it saves me retyping everything.

[Boots]

That sounds like an expensive, but very effective set up. I would never have thought strand wire would keep pigs in, but I guess the electric fencing helps heaps. Have you got that running on solar?

I really like the run down the centre too. My pens all run into each other, which is ok most of the time but not always. When the goats are in the last pen and need to be rotated back to the first, it means running them back through seeded or re-establishing pens, which is always a hassle.

Have taken that centre run on board for the next lot I want to install on the hill, so thanks heaps for sharing it.

[Stonehead]

The centre run opens on to a 12ft wide track, fenced on both sides. Two 12ft gates can be used to close off a section of the track, so that you get a square loading pen that can take pigs from the centre run or from the field above (which the track opens into).

When we had sheep in recently, all we had to do when the chap came to collect them was herd them into the V-corner of the field, then they ran through the open gate into the section of track and then we shut the gate behind them. He reversed his van up to the lower gate, we opened it slightly as he reversed and then held it against the side of the van. With the 5ft gate into the centre run angled on the other side, it was easy to walk the sheep into the back of the van.

The main thing to remember is that when tracks meet at corners of the fenceline, you don't want all 90 degree angles. These are a bugger for larger vehicle and tractors with machinery on the back. We have one 90 degree angle, but all the other corners are stepped back to allow a wide turning circle.

I'll take a few photos tomorrow to illustrate what I'm saying.

[Stonehead]

And the latest news is that Piggsville is now population 7. We've had an eight to 10 week old piglet dumped here, and the boys have named him Thunder.

He looks like a Gloucester Old Spot/Tamworth cross, but we can't be sure.

I'll have to ring the council tomorrow and see what I can do about the paperwork as we're supposed to be able to show where all pigs on the place came from.

[PurpleDragon]

Dumped? What happened?

There was someone advertising pigs as pets in the local Scot Ads a few weeks ago. I wonder if someone took one and then decided that having a pig as a pet wasn't the best idea they'd ever had.

[Stonehead]

Dumped? What happened?

There was someone advertising pigs as pets in the local Scot Ads a few weeks ago. I wonder if someone took one and then decided that having a pig as a pet wasn't the best idea they'd ever had.

Someone must have put him over the fence. He was running around, enjoying the grass when we found him.

Some barley, potatoes and warm milk in a bucket brought him running, a nice chat and some strokes quickly had him stretched out for a belly rub and now he's got a big pen and a huge ark (in comparison to him) all to himself. He's very people friendly, so yes, I suspect he was a pet.

If I had other piglets, I'd put him with them but as we don't I've put him in the pen between the Saddlebacks and Ginger. It means he has company but won't get bullied or miss out on feed.

Now I just have to get the council on side about the paperwork!

[PurpleDragon]

Well, I spose on the upside at least someone cared enough to put him somewhere he would be looked after, instead of dumping him in the woods to fend for himself like some folk do with domestic pets.

Hope the council can see yours side of things ...

[Stonehead]

Well, I spose on the upside at least someone cared enough to put him somewhere he would be looked after, instead of dumping him in the woods to fend for himself like some folk do with domestic pets.

But why should we have to pick up the pieces for some thoughtless twit? Why should we have to feed him and care for him? Why should we be the ones who sort out the paperwork?

And yes, I know we can and will, but that's not the point. I get fed up with selfish people going out and doing something on impulse, then dumping the responsibility for sorting out the resulting mess on someone else.

On top of that, there's the disease issue - remember FMD? We'll have to have a movement standstill (except for animals going to slaughter), but luckily we have no other animals leaving the place at the moment. It would have very annoying if we'd had animals due to leave the place this week.

Sorry, but I think the "oh well, at least you'll care for him properly" attitude sucks. That's what got him dumped on us in the first place.

Sorry if I sound tetchy, but it's been a long hard day after a long hard week and I now find we're expected to clean up after someone else.

[PurpleDragon]

I quite agree with you, and I apologise if I sounded flippant.

With cats and dogs, these people tend to just dump them in the woods and hope the animal can fend for itself. Perhaps they don't even care if it can or not - it never crosses their mind - as long as the animal isn't their responsibility any more.

Some people will take an unwanted animal to Cats Protection or Dog Rescue or whatever their local equivalent is. They no longer want the responsibility, but there is some spark of decency that moves them to try and find somewhere that will care for the animal.

The advert I mentioned offered "miniature pigs, make excellent pets" or words to that effect, and a lot of people are under the idea that looking after a miniature pig is much like looking after a medium size dog. There wee many instances a few years ago where folk got cute little baby pot-bellied pigs under this belief, and then the pigs grow and the folk got a right fright.

I reckon someone answered either that advert or a similar one, working under the impression that they would have an unusual pet, and then found that they didn't have the first clue how to look after it. What to do? There's a bloke down the road who looks after properly reared pigs - he'll want a free one. I for one didn't know that pigs need paperwork, and I will made a good bet that this one didn't come to the Dumper with any either. All this person will think is - I have a pig, I don't want a pig, he has pigs so he obviously DOES want them, he'll want another one for free, end of my problem.

[Boots]

Is there any chance this could be an escapee, Stoney?

Maybe someone nearby decided to keep one, and it has just made its way to company. Someone might be looking for it, maybe?

A couple of families over the back hill have a couple of goats. They have gone missing a couple of times and always head to my crew. I just pen them until the owners come knocking, which thankfully they always have.

Is there any chance of that? Might be worth holding off on the naming and paperwork, just in case?

[Stonehead]

Is there any chance this could be an escapee, Stoney?

No, no other pigs for miles now. The people who sold up across the road had pigs (Saddlebacks), but they cleared their stock out weeks ago and left.

All the big farms around us are either beef, sheep or mixed with no pigs, while the smaller properties are either horses or "lifestyle". There's no one else with pigs for many miles in any direction and none of the nearby horse set are potential pig owners - we've been told we should move our pigs away from the edges of our place because they frighten the horses as they go past. Some of the riders also tell us we shouldn't keep pigs as they "smelly and disgusting".

No, I'm pretty sure someone stopped and dumped him, because he was inside the pig fence on a bend and a fair way from the gates. There's also a place to stop near where we found him.

[Stonehead]

The council's animal health department tells me that dumped farm animals are becoming increasingly common. A lot of people see pigs on TV programmes and decide to get one - either as a pet or to eat - then change their mind when reality bites.

So what do they do? Dump it at the nearest farm or bit of woodland.

The officer I spoke said I should be glad I didn't get a 30 to 40 stone gilt or boar dumped here as that has happened! (That's 180-250kg for the metric people.)

I have to notify the police, wait two or three days, then enter the piglet onto my herd book with the note "Found Abandoned - Police and Animal Health aware". I then send in a movement form to the same effect.

Pigs, poultry and goats are the main farm animals being dumped, but it also happens with sheep and cattle (yes, despite all the paperwork and tagging, untraceable cattle are still out there).