Richard Perkins moves pigs from the barn into new paddocks with five-wire fencing and old sheep gates. The animals explore a swampy area by a stream where frog spawn floats, and he explains why these Linderöd pigs dig and how to keep them in.
Questions this video answers
Five-wire, high-tensile fence.
Non-electrified old sheep gates (two per paddock for vehicle access).
Linda Rudd pigs (described as Swedish, Linderöd-like/landrace type).
Chapters
Finished the fence for the pigs today. Moved the sauna. And we've been organizing a bunch of other stuff. So I'll just give you a quick update of what's going on. We finished pig fence. It went well. Yeah. Five wire fence, high tensile. But we've gone for non electrified gates. We're just using the old sheep gates because it makes daily chores much nicer. You can just come and service the pens real easy. And we've built all the fence posts so that each paddock is going to have two gates like this for vehicle access if necessary. And one is wider than the others. They're 5 meters and 480. So we're going to build each set of fence posts. Is going to have the main entrance and the further exit built in those dimensions. So we can use these panels in all of the different pens. And that's much more preferable to using spring gates. Because pigs like to escape out of spring gates. And chasing pigs around Young Cut Forest. Not fun. Matt's got a welt on his leg from last year actually trying to catch a pig. We just screwed a couple of boards on temporarily across all the spring gates. Because pigs learn very quickly that they can go through that sort of fence. And they remember that kind of stuff for a long time. There's always one, isn't there? Reuben's the boar. And he's. He's taking his time. Hey, Reuben. So that was pretty successful. Reuben took his time getting up here. He always likes to take his time. But we lost two piglets back in the barn. We're going to go and see where they're at. And we left the mama with her piglets in the barn. Just because it's too far a journey for them to make it up. She would just probably run off at the excitement of going outside and leave the piglets behind. Gracie just sneaked up on us. Gracie, guess who's in here.
Piggies.
Piggies, you want to come and see? Look, you can go through the gate. The electric fence is on, but the gate isn't electric. You want to go in? Let's go see piggies. Did you have a good day, Leb?
Well, it's a bit early to see you. Picked up some phoetids.
You had an early end to phoetids because you were coming to help with Ragnar a bit. Look who's here. What do piggies love to do?
Dig.
And they just dig with their noses. Can you imagine digging holes with your nose? No. It would hurt. Your nose wouldn't it look, they're so happy to be out and about now. They're all over the place. They've got this whole big paddock. Matt and I just finished the fencing all the way down near the stream. Let's go down the hill and we'll see. It's a very swampy bit at the farm, so we're going piggyback style in the piggy pen. This is a very nice spot, actually. It's got the overflow from the stream. In the winter the stream overflows into here. It's full of frog spawn. Might not be for long, though. It's just from two frogs. Well, one pair of frogs. Well, I've been watching them as we've been building the fence. We've been seeing it.
Did you see them lay it?
Yeah, well, she laid some like throughout the day and over the night. I mean, that's a lot. Look, here's Reuben coming down the hill.
I think we're in trouble.
No, he's a peaceful. He's very big and very strong, but he's very peaceful. Pig. Look, they're having a great time exploring. Which is the little cheeky pig that was escaping over the winter? Is it this one? Yeah, he's been escaping all winter. So if anyone's gonna find a way to get out the pen, it's gonna be him. These are Linda Rudd pigs, aren't they? And they're the only sort of Swedish, like Landrace breed of pig. They're more like a wild boar. Very dark meat, very delicious. Most pigs in Sweden are the Yorkshire breeds, the pink sort of industrial pigs. But we don't really want those kind of pigs. We like this kind of pigs. They are huge, aren't they? Hello, pig.
I can climb over pig.
It's always fun moving pigs. You never know what they're going to do. And really a big animal like that, if it decides it wants to go through the fence, it's off. And there's very little you can do to stop an animal that size. But generally, as long as they can see a clear way forward and they can see where each other are, it's usually quite fine. I'm going to pick up the other two piglets now and move them up there too.
So the pigs seem to be exploring and they love to travel the fence lines. It's going to be really interesting to watch what happens to the ground after they've been through and the ground's recovered. Happy piggies. Growth has begun early this year. It's the earliest spring we've had for a long time. The pond's looking good. A lot of water flowing over. This is turning over its total volume of water every two days. The vineyard's yet to start putting on growth this year, and we've got all the vines coming for the other half of the vineyard. They should be arriving any day now. We've had 22 lambs now. They're doing really good. Some beautiful little ones. We've got the sauna in its final position now. This is an area in the middle of the farm where we have fires in the summer. And we've got it pretty level in here. That's a lovely view of the sunset from in here. Looking forward to having the next sauna. Been having sauna every day, which is awesome. That's all for today, folks. Thanks for watching our videos. Click subscribe below if you want to keep up to date with the season at the farm. Find out more in our book Making Small Farms Work, in the links below. Make sure you watch Gracie's Backyard. It's coming out soon. Look forward to sharing that with you. See you next time.
