[Bionic]

Ours have always been in a pen, inside a field. The field has wire fencing but the pen is wood stock fencing. It's been worth it's weight in gold

[heyhay1984]

Agreed on the electric fence, I'm not good enough at managing it to rely on it 100% so have the external area stock fenced and divide it up with electric to suggest to the pigs that it would be helpful if they could possibly consider staying where they were, please 

That said I am going to try using some spare railway sleepers as the bottom 'strand' then run electric behind/above that as an experiment to section in a very small paddock this year as most of my problems come from mud being pushed onto the wires. Not a very good solution unless you have these things lying around but I'm going to see how we get on.

[Marches Farmer]

If you move your pigs to different areas of your holding you'll also have to move the water supply, drinker and ark too.  My pigs have never escaped but thn they have concrete, tin and railway sleeper exercise yards, with purpose made iron gates. Lop eared breeds are rumoured to be less likely to escape, owing to their limited field of vision, but I wouldn't bet on it!

[Cuddles]

"we've heard that pigs can be used to create drainage channels"  ...Loving this idea! 

I'm on my 3rd year of keeping weaners and none of them have shown the slightest interest in a shovel or a high vis jacket no matter how wet the ground was!     Maybe a mini digger is the way to go...  Can you work one with trotters?

As for fencing, I agree with what has been said already.   I keep my pigs inside stock fencing (with barb bottom wire) and portable electric fencing.  My tamworths were brilliant and never tried to escape once, my kune kune's were always to be found outside the electric fence but still within the stock fence.  This years OSBs have been as good as gold ...so far.

Happy fencing and enjoy your piggies.

Cuddles.