Pigs are very interesting critters, in some ways they are very much herd animals and they are a odd mix of prey and predator in their behaviour.

Now I am going to talk about this in terms of a small farm, in no way is this advance meant for someone who had many many pigs, nope, this is for those of us that have one or two sows and raise a litter of piglets, some for weaner sales, some to raise pork for our own freezers or for farm gate sales.

so the first thing we need to learn is that our lovely sweet pig or two who we will be able to gentle and have voice trained will not be much help on the piglets that are going to be a mob at the weaner age, when it comes to the wee babes, I don’t even bother with the board/herding stick training, I just go straight to the food and the board method.

So lets look at the ways to train your pig and piglets.

The call.. o yes, this is a near and dear thing.. this is the call you make when you arrive and you are carrying goodies, be it hay, bedding, scrapes or feed.. you should have the same call for everyone on the farm, in my case, its Pig, Pig, Pig, said in a lower, sharper almost grunty repeat of a sound.. its farmgal’s version of a momma pigs food call grunting. Only if the pigs are far away, will I raise it up to a higher sound but it keeps the same rapid sound, but it becomes a lyric sound, this tells them to come in, where as the lower sound says “food/Water/Bedding etc”

now if you have bigger outside pens as well as indoor pens, awesome, this is even better because you can teach them to move from spot to spot, if they are sitting at x, don’t feed there, walk over to y or z and call them to you. If they are all waiting at the gate, walk down the fence line and call them and then feed and walk back up to do the water etc.

They should learn at a young age, that they want to get to where you are at but they also need to learn how to follow..

The bucket.. even if you are feeding food that does not rattle, learn out to make your bucket rattle, rattle, rattle is a very good thing, if you always use the same buckets and the same sound, it will create a conditioned response.

Every now and again when you just one pig or two, let them stick their head in and take a bit while leading them around and soon enough you will have a pig that is well trained to move from place to place following the “lure” now the bucket is lure that I like but Miss Piggy is trained to banana’s, its considered a special treat around the farm, and even when she is out in the pasture and giving me the stink eye on, I am not going to the barn or to that other pasture, banana is sure to get the correct following.

Now that is good for everyone, and if you are only doing one or two pigs, the above will meet most of your needs, but piglets are different matter. They are a wee mob and will run this way and that, and be danged the food bucket, or the call.. we are so busy! busy, I tell you..

that is when the boards come into play, they are great for smaller spaces of course but even for bigger pastures, they are handy, the reason is simple, if they can’t see to go that way, they won’t, if you can line it up that someone is leading and the other is pushing, even better..

When it comes to loading, using boards makes it so much easier but so does finding out what kind of crate the person is bringing and trying to get it into their area and encourage them to sleep in it, or be feed in it etc

If you know that you are going to need a ramp to go up, consider setting up a ramp for them to play on and learn to go up and down, I am lucky, the inside pen has a gutter, and so you can set a wooden ramp up and they can walk up and down it, this is very helpful.

If you are doing it from the ground, if you can darken the sides of the crate but leave light coming in on the end, this is close to perfect, they will go to the light, but struggle typically about going into the dark when they can’t see a way out of it and its a unknown.

So the start is to feed them goodies, and then walk among them with your board and herding stick and just start by walking up and bumping them with the board, let them get over that fear first, then get to the point you can walk beside them with the board and if they stop, do a light tap on the rump and get them to understand that its not going to hurt them, just going to move them forward or if done at the shoulder, ideally backward or side ways.

Once you have those basic’s done, you are so rocking along, between the different things you can do above, there really is no moving or loading that can’t be done safely if you take your time, read your animals and do it slow by steady!