Fence Jumping Pig, Wandering Cattle, Confused Hens & Angel Goats

Grant was in Virginia last week visiting a few farmer friends, so naturally a pig who has been regularly getting out of the fence (but staying within the perimeter fence in that area of that farm) escalated his misbehavior!

Our farm staffer Nicole and I each separately spent a fair amount of time getting him back in with his siblings only to eventually watch him just JUMP OVER the three foot sheet metal in the hoophouse to go back to frolicking around. (To be fair, the bedding piled up on the side does make the jump more like 2.5 feet instead of the full 3 feet. But he’s definitely an athletic pig and we were joking that he was inspired by pole vaulters in the Olympics.

As a get by, Nicole eventually lured him into the recently vacated pullet hoophouse nearby and put him on lock down with his very own large trough to wallow in and plenty of feed, hay and bedding. Hopefully he’ll learn to respect the hot fence to rejoin his group soon.

Meanwhile, the cattle had a planned paddock shift while Grant was gone. Nicole just had to spool up a reel of poly wire that was keeping them from the last section of the field they’re currently in.

All seemed well until I got home and they were wandering around by our tiny house, which is quite a distance from where they were supposed to be.

I called Grant and he realized that he had taken down a gate to move Flock 2’s chicken coop to another field and hadn’t put it back on!

So that was surprising, but I realized that if he had forgotten about that gate, he was definitely to the point where he very much needed a vacation.

And luckily, even though the cattle were pretty full, I miraculously got them to follow me back to where they were supposed to be and get the gate back on the hinge by myself!

The newest flock seem to be loving life foraging in this field, however, it always takes awhile for them to learn to lay in the nest boxes and they are supremely confused on that front! They are laying a lot of eggs underneath the coop and then in tufts of tall grass around the paddock.

We are using some poultry netting that we were given by some friends that is longer between posts and therefore also easier for the hens to duck under it and get out.

So we also have lots of hens wandering around outside the fence during the day. Yesterday Grant bush hogged the next section of the pasture for them and set up our preferred poultry nets with a shorter distance between posts.

By tonight we should be able to close them off in the next section and hopefully the recently cut grass and the better fencing will limit their shenanigans. At the very least, they are lined up near the fence every night waiting to be let back in and join the flock!

Meanwhile, the goats have been angels! Well, that’s how I like to think of it because I love them so, but in reality it’s just that when their needs are met they are very good goats.

I moved them to the next field on Tuesday morning and set up the temporary gates to the field entrance the wrong way (where they could lean against them and inadvertently knock them over).

So because of that, they did immediately stroll on out into the internal road and there was a moment where the cattle seemed so curious about them that they were about to jump their gates to sniff them!

But, the goats followed me right back in. And they had so much forage in that field that it took a full two more days for us (and them) to realize that we hadn’t even closed off the third entrance to that field.

So they did eventually wander back out into the internal road and then they helpfully ate tons of morning glory and ragweed that had been covering the temporary gates!

When I got home, they were back where they belonged int he correct field all on their own and the gates that had been covered in vines were now exposed and I grabbed them and put them in place. So helpful!