The Peace of Pigs

A pig will eat you. It isn’t personal—it’s just how pigs are. They are omnivores, and as such, are not opposed to sampling human if the opportunity arises.

I would never lay down in the grass in a field of pigs. I’d be quite happy to do it with a herd of cattle, unless there was a particularly man-hating momma in the herd. It can be daunting—try it. You lay down in the grass, thick, hot and sweet, the rush of growing and living things around your head. Close your eyes, try not to wiggle too much, even if there are ants. The cattle will come. Gradually, at first.

One will see you and come over to investigate, especially if they’re yearling cattle. The rest will follow, as teenagers inclined to mischief often do. After those first few, if the cattle aren’t occupied with excellent grass, they’ll come thunderously as a whole herd.

It’s difficult to keep your eyes closed when you hear all those thundering, heavy feet coming closer. Then the breathing, some wheezing because they’re a little out of shape for running. The breathing is all around you, thick, like the hum of a gathered crowd. Then, the eating. They’re always eating, if there’s anything to eat. The cropping, squeaking of grass gathered up by long tongues. Gradually it gets nearer and nearer to you. Eventually, if you don’t move, they will come along and sniff your face, and eat the grass right next to your ear, if they’re particularly tame.

They might nibble your clothes, but a cow will never eat you. A pig might.

Pigs are clever creatures, probably why Orwell used them as the villains in his book Animal Farm. Real pigs aren’t malicious, they’re just blithely self-serving. Their intelligence is what separates them from other animals. A pig is happiest when it has new things to explore and learn. It’s why it’s so hard to build any sort of fence, watering system, or shelter that will stand up to a pig. They will never leave it alone. They will worry it continuously, like a dog with a bone.

The first few summers we raised pigs on pasture, we had a lot of problems. The tires on our hay-wagon shelters kept mysteriously going flat. I mean, over and over. We couldn’t understand it. Finally, Ethan realized that the pigs were actually chewing on the valve stems on the tires and breaking the seal. They literally found the one thing poking out which was fun to play with and broke it. My husband welded short lengths of pipe to the rims to protect the valve stems. Problem solved.

Waterers proved another difficulty. We made one out of a 55 gallon drum, set a float in it, and put it out by the pigs. The float would keep the water from leaking, but the pigs figured out that by rocking the heavy waterer, and digging a hole underneath it, they could get it to leak and spill enough to make a nice wallow–and drain their entire 275 gallon tank—in a matter of hours. Ethan built a special waterer with a mesh floor so the pigs would have to stand on it while they were drinking, and that worked a lot better.

One big problem we couldn’t tackle: the digging. It turns out, a pig’s snout is specifically designed for one thing—digging holes. The giant muscular neck is as effective as a bulldozer for pushing that snout wherever the pig wants to dig his new hole. This may come in handy in truffle forests in Spain or England, but in arid desert Idaho, every new hole was a personal affront to our custom hay guy.

This “problem” has been “solved” by everything from snout-rings to the Kunekune breed (“These pigs don’t dig at all!” Great! They also don’t grow at all!).

About June of 2020, we noticed the digging had abruptly stopped. Then we realized why. In June, all the pivots on the ranch (we were currently running our pig herd on one of the pivot fields on Alderspring) were shut off to cut hay. During those 3-6 days that it took for the hay to be cut, windrow-dried, and baled, our pigs were not getting any additional moisture in the ground. The Central Idaho clay soil became almost impenetrable. Not only that, but there was no moisture to be worth digging for.

Success! we thought. Ethan, who could have made a lot more money as an engineer, came up with an elaborate, specially designed pivot shut-off system. How it worked was each of the sprinklers on the pivot was switched out with a solenoid valve, an electronically controlled valve. All these were connected to each other, and then to a solar-charged battery on the top of the pivot. When power was sent down the line to the valves, they would remain open. When power was shut-off, they would close. Ethan set up a mechanically actuated arm which controlled the power shut-off. The arm would hit a metal post that we pounded into the grass at the start of where our pig herd was. Another metal post on the other side of the pigs could turn the power back on.

Thus, when the pivot rolled over our pigs, the post would set off the arm, the arm would shut off the power, the power would shut off the valves, shutting off the water, and the pivot would roll over our pigs, completely dry on that section. The post on the other side would turn the water back on, and the pivot could continue merrily down the field, irrigating.

We worked together on it, planning it out on paper, fixing things that didn’t work, buying the parts we needed and mounting everything on the pivot (which belonged to my Dad, but he enjoys esoteric innovation as much as the next guy). For several weeks there was trouble-shooting on the ground, and the pigs occasionally still got wet.

I will say, there came a day when the arm hit the post, the water turned off, and Ethan and I jumped up and down and shouted with excitement. It all worked!

We thought our problems were in the past. They were just beginning.

The pigs started to die.

They had everything they needed: water, feed, shade, good pasture with lots of flowers. We lost probably three in one week.

It wasn’t just the ones dying, it was everyone else. Looking around at our herd of pigs, they didn’t look like pigs should. They weren’t mischievous, they were apathetic. Their coats didn’t glisten, they were rough, hairy, itchy looking. All of them had a kind of lethargy to them. They weren’t even that interested when we brought new feed, or when we gave them fresh pasture.

Now, you might think this is all obvious, but it isn’t. When you’re there on the ground, with your animals, sometimes you’re clueless as to what is going on. You’re busy. The thought, What is going on with the pigs? is in your mind, all the time, but there are always a million things to do and think about on a ranch.

Sometimes you start to wonder if you’re just having bad luck. The old adage, “If you’ve got livestock, you’ve got dead stock,” comes to mind. It sounds harsh, but the reality is sometimes weird things happen. It’s life. It’s ranching. It’s farming. You don’t always know what all the variables are, but you are doing your best.

But we knew that something drastic had to be done after those losses and the languishing others. We hated to see our pigs acting that way. This was our fourth year raising pigs, and we knew what they looked like when they were doing well. We knew what happy pigs were like. Our pigs were not.

Finally Ethan said, “I think we should give them a wallow.”

I kinda stared at him. We’d been working on the No Mud Initiative for a couple months. Could we be totally wrong?

Ethan and I brought a trailer out to the pigs with 275 gallons of water on it. We dumped it on the grass.

Everything changed for those animals. I mean, everything. In the next few days, we saw such a turnaround. The biggest change was in behavior. They became lively, they ran away from us, barking like normal pigs do. They wanted the pasture, they wanted to explore, they were looking for ways to get out, as a healthy pig will do. They played, they ran, they ate.

I won’t say that our summer was a failure. I won’t say that all our time working on our elaborate Water Shut-off System was wasted. We took it down, a little sadly, because it was expensive and had seemed successful. But it wasn’t really.

In the end, the lesson we learned was more valuable. It was that we can’t change the nature of our pigs. They are pigs, and if we want to give them the best, happiest, healthiest life we can, we won’t try to squeeze them where they don’t fit.

Today our pigs occupy an area of the Alderspring Ranch that will never have hay equipment run over it. They’re allowed to wallow, and we re-seed behind them. We hope to use them to turn a non-productive piece of ground into a healthy one.

Sometimes my Dad sends me photos of 24-story hog houses in China, where pork is raised to feed that hungry nation. Climate-controlled and lit by fluorescent bulbs, it’s unlikely those hogs will ever see natural light. They’ll never get a chance to dig for worms. They’ll never know what it’s like to roll and splash in delicious mud. They’ll never truly enjoy life, the way only a pig can.

To me, that’s depressing.  That’s not a style of agriculture that respects these unique animals and gives them a life that’s suited for them. We seem to have two choices before us, in our raising of food: The 24 story building, or some kind of symbiosis with the natural world, and the nature of the animals themselves.

Even if animals don’t feel things the way we do, even if they’re fairly adaptable, our question should not be: How much can these animals put up with? But: How good of a life can we give them? If they live a marginal life, is that even food that can nourish us? Does that, in turn, lead to our marginal health?

I just want to end with this: The feeling that we had, after we dumped out 275 gallons of water for our pigs to make a wallow with, after we saw the change that took place, was peace. It was the rightness of giving contentment to an animal. It’s the same feeling that I have when I open an electric fence and let a herd of cattle onto a new, beautiful pasture. To the best of my ability, I delivered contentment to these creatures in my care. 

It’s another hot summer day in 2023. The day is beginning to draw to a close as I turn the portable pump off and everything goes quiet. Well, mostly quiet. There’s still the sound of splashing, from the herd of pigs in their paddock, rolling and cavorting in the fresh wallow I just made them. I stop to watch them. They shake their mighty heads, the drops of water flying in all directions. Their eyes squint up, partly with pleasure, partly to keep the water out. They lay first on one side in the mud, then on the other, flipping themselves like pancakes. In the end, their hides are glistening. Wet and comfortable, they get up to go eat, like young people moving on to the next bar.

In the field past the pigs, the killdeer are trilling alarm, pretending to have hurt wings so I will follow them away from their hidden nest. The trickle of the water in the ditches far behind me is a pleasant gurgle; any sound of water in this country is music.

A coolness, a quietness after the raucous summer day is starting to emanate from the river. With it comes the mosquitoes. I swat one on my wrist, and put the pump back in order for the evening. One last time I look at the pigs, now loitering or eating contentedly. It is a good life.

As I turn to walk back to the truck, I forget my tired muscles and the mosquitoes for a moment. A slow smile tugs at my mouth. It is a good life.

Abby