Mass escape

We’ve had a lot of rain in a week and a bit.  The ground is soft and muddy everywhere, and that makes the electric fence easy to knock over.

The pigs escaped after their supper yesterday, an hour before dark.  I thought I heard them snorting around in the woods by the house, and I assumed that they would be bedding down and we’d see them in the morning.  Boy was I wrong.

They had wandered nearly a kilometer away, and there was a grand nighttime pig drive, our neighbour herding them down the road towards us in a side by side, Hugh rattling a bucket of feed that they ignored, and me sprinting back and forth to keep them on the road.

They were so tired and cranky, all they wanted to do was lie down, so the hardest part was the final bit through the brushy orchard and field, where they were separating, circling back, and flopping down anywhere they could.  What a miserable rodeo.  Then we had another torrential downpour overnight.

This morning we moved their house onto dry land (they root, it rains, it becomes a mud hole, I move them) and moved their territory. After breakfast and a cursory exploration of this week’s ground to churn up (pleased oinking), they went in their house to make a nest (more pleased oinking), and passed out. 

They’re going to sleep real well after that big adventure.  We are planning to take one of the three out tomorrow.

What a night.  You can’t even.