Little Piggies lost

We learned a lesson this week...

Not everything that is on the internet works for everyone. Yes we already knew that, but some things we must learn for ourselves.

...hotwire does NOT work for our pigs.

I wish I had pictures, but in the craziness I did not even think about taking pictures. Here is the story.

As you know from the last post, on Saturday we moved the pigs to a section of pasture with just hotwire. On Sunday Eric went to feed the pigs...and they were GONE. He looked around and found some rooting and tracks and followed that across all the pastures over to the house area.

All around the house Eric found lots of pig poo. We assume they slept next to the house overnight. He continues to follow the tracks across the clearing and across the creek into the neighbors field.

Now I am assuming they are gone. How will we find them, impossible right?....NO

Monday Eric just happened to call the neighbor down the road, just to let him know that the pigs were out and looked to be coming his way. He said he would keep an eye out.

Three minutes later, he called back to say they were in his garden. Eric was on his way home and would pick up Madison and I and we would come get them.

How do you capture 3 pigs? I surely don't know. Eric decided to take the dog crate along.

We found the pigs waiting in his back yard, being guarded by his dog. He actually growled at us when we tried to capture them. We took out our ropes, figuring that we would get some of them tied up and them put them in the crate.

We put out our scrap (like chocolate for kids) and they dove right in. I caught one by the leg and got the rope around it. Then the squealing started. The more she tried to get away, the more (and louder) she squealed. The sound was deafening and almost made you feel dizzy.

It was like she was warning the others to stay away. So we took her and put her into the dog crate and I held it standing up with the opening at the top. Then Eric was able to grab another and we opened the door at the top and dropped in the second one. The last one knew something was going on and not to get close. It took almost 20 minutes of enticing her closer, but eventually they got her.

Now all 3 are in the crate, and they can't barely move. We put the crate on the back of the truck and drive to the farm. We walk up to the fence and check to see what went wrong. We figure they got out near the gate and decide to make it more secure.

At this point it is getting really late and dark, we almost can't see what we are doing. We are afraid to move them out when it is so dark and decide to take them home and leave them in the crate on the truck.

We drive down the road and go about 500 feet and the right before we get to the stop sign...the clutch in the truck pops and falls to the floor. Now the truck is dead on the side of the road, with 3 very unhappy pigs on the back.

Eric calls his boss in the morning and lets them know he will be late. Eric calls in the calvary and get our friends Brian and Kevin to help us get the pigs back to the farm. They transfer the crate to Brian's truck, but Brian doesn't have 4x4 so he can't drive back through the pasture. So Eric gets a rope out of the truck and ties it to one of the pigs and drags her squealing back to the new pig fence.

Then he watches her walk right out of the fence. So he calls me to come over to help.

Needless to say, we had to move the electric netting anyway and rework the hotwire to fit inside. Finally, they were all back in their new pasture and we could get back to previously scheduled chores.