Domino the Gigilo and The Pig Parade

Meet Domino!  Being new to pig farming, everything is a new experience.  And borrowing a boar was, thankfully, one of the most pleasant!

We had raised two beautiful sows, Esmerelda and Petunia, with  the last set of piglets with the intention of breeding them.  Having never bred any animal before, I did a lot of research and talked to a handful of people who are pig savvy.  The consensus?  If you are only going to breed a couple of sows, just borrow! Most pig farmers who own boars are more than happy to lend them out for a month or so at a time to save on the cost of feeding such a large animal.  But the real question was; where do find a boar to borrow?

After asking almost everyone I know, checking Craig’s List and coming up empty, I was starting to worry that we wouldn’t be able to find a boar.  Finally I got lucky! I mentioned to a customer that I was looking for a boar and he gave me the name of a local farmer who might have one.  I immediately went home and called the farmer.  Yes! He had a boar and would be happy to lend him to us.

Ok, now it was time for me to panic! We  were really going to do this.  Unchartered territory for me and overwhelming and intimidating in the responsibility and unknown.  Not to mention, boars don’t always have the best reputation when it comes to temperament.  Some can be mean, and they are big…I mean, really big!  400-500lbs big!  I think this was my biggest fear about having a boar come to visit.

Kurt, the farmer, assured me that his boar was friendly and pretty mellow.  “I’ve had some boars who’d’ve killed you….this one’s a good one.”  Domino was his name, about two years old and a proven breeder.  We were set to pick him up that coming Saturday.

When we arrived at Kurt’s farm, he introduced us to Domino.  He was a large black and white boar, spotted like a domino, with giant floppy ears and long sweeping eyelashes.  He was a handsome guy, and didn’t seem aggressive and my anxiety lessened.   Using their own fresh milk as a lure, he was able to get Domino into our trailer in a timely fashion.

After Domino was loaded and read to go, Kurt and his wife gave us a tour of their farm.  Like us, they are hobby farmers.  They do it for themselves, for the quality of the food, milk and eggs, and for the quality of the animals’ lives.  They have dairy cows and I was fascinated with the process and loved being able to see the cows.  Dairy is a long-term dream of mine and the tour was informative and exciting.  They also have chickens and, of course, pigs.  We talked for a bit about farming and then we were on our way.

When we arrived home with Domino, we backed the trailer up to the girls’ yard and let the pigs sniff at each other.  Then we lowered the ramp and let Domino venture out at his own pace.  It was not love at first sight! Esmerelda and Petunia were terrified! Domino just went about his own business, checking out his new surroundings.  Soon after his arrival, Ezzie, went after Domino and a fight ensued.  It was a battle of alpha and Domino won.  Ezzie was devastated to lose her position of power and sulked in the corner of the pig house for the rest of the afternoon.

When evening came and the pigs were all in bed, I went out to check on them.  Uh oh, had we made a mistake?  The girls had taken some of the straw and moved their bed to the opposite side of the house.  Domino was sleeping where the bed had previously been, as far from the girls as possible.

The next night I went out to check the sleeping situation and found that Domino had taken all the straw  and re-made the bed in its original place, a big giant nest of straw and Domino lying high on the top of it.  The girls were sleeping on the opposite side of the house, strawless and as far from him as possible.  It appeared there was a war of the beds in progress.

On the fourth night, I went out to see how things were progressing and I found all three pigs cuddled together on a big bed of straw.  Finally, things were settling in.

By the fifth day, I noticed the pigs behavior was changing.  Domino was very interested in them and would make strange huffing noises and the girls were playing nice with him.  On the morning of the sixth day I unknowingly walked into a “private” moment and witnessed the breeding of Ezzie.  Later that day, Petunia had muddy streaks all down her sides, a tell-tale signs of having been bred.  This went on like this for a couple of days and they all seemed to get along great.

By the second week the honeymoon was over and the pigs were back to sleeping in separate areas of the house.  Ezzie was back to harassing Domino and he seemed unhappy.  So, although it had only been a couple of weeks, we called up Kurt and arranged to return Domino to his home.

Did we really get that lucky and the girls went into heat only a couple short days after the boar arrived?  It would seem that way, as my understanding is that pigs don’t “do it for fun”, as a farmer friend explained it. Also, pigs are remarkably like humans, probably the closest animal biologically.  So their reproductive cycle is similar to a woman’s in that they have a fertile period once every month.  Keeping a boar for a month will almost guarantee a successful breeding, although you can tell when a sow is in heat and could track the cycle if you wanted to.  So, I guess there isn’t any reason we couldn’t have just got Domino right before their heat.  But only time will tell.

Pigs have a gestation period of three months, three weeks, three days.  And being such a large animal, it’s hard to judge if they are pregnant by their size.  If I had been tracking their heats, I would know because they wouldn’t have one, but other than that or a pricey test, the only way to know for sure is to wait.  In the last month of their pregnancy they will possibly start to “show” by having a distended belly, and then their milk will come in and they will start to “nest” a couple of days before they deliver or farrow.

The waiting is killing me! I am so excited about the idea of having piglets and witnessing the miracle of birth.  Mid July is their expected due date, and I can’t wait!

Here’s a quick story about the pigs that happened a couple of months ago.  Mid week, on a beautiful early spring day, I received a phone call from my husband telling me that apparently the pigs had escaped their pen during the day and had gone on a  little field trip.  My husband and I both work out-of-town and were unaware that our two, three hundred pound sows were rambling through our neighborhood.  Oh No!!

Apparently the sparkling sunshine and the warm spring temperature had given Ezzie and Petunia spring fever and they lifted the hog panel fence and tore it clean off the side of their house.  Escaping into the field, they followed a path of melted snow, rooting an leaving hoof prints in the soft ground.  They meandered down to the chicken coop and rooted around following a path to the road.  From there, it seems, they traveled down our busy road a few hundred feet and then took a right turn onto our neighbors driveway.  The driveway is long and you cannot see the house from the road.

Meanwhile, our neighbor Ann Marie, was sitting in her kitchen enjoying the day, when she looked up to see two huge sows in her front yard.  Being a former sheep farmer, she was unafraid.  Ann Marie didn’t realize that we were raising pigs and couldn’t think of who they might belong to, so she called the local police.

The Chief of Police is an acquaintance of ours and knew exactly who these two sows belonged to.  When he realized that we weren’t home, he quickly went up to the pig barn, grabbed a 5 gallon bucket, and returned to Ann Marie’s.  With the assistance of a rookie cop; in brand new, shiny boots, and Ann Marie,  The Chief was able to herd the sows up the road, through the field and back into their pen.  A pig parade!  How funny would it have been to see two cops, a middle-aged grandmother and two giant pink sows parading up a main road on a bright spring day?

I am thankful that I live in a town where the Chief of Police knows how to round-up pigs, and where a neighbor doesn’t get freaked out when two large pigs show up on her doorstep.  Esmerelda and Petunia’s gallivanting days are over, we installed electric fencing.