[bealers]

Hi,

A year back we became the guardians of circa 8 acres of very derelict hazel coppice.

We left it to its own devices for a year, observing and seeing what's what and last winter I had my first stab at kicking the rotation back off.

One idea - fuelled in part by the BBC4 prog tales from the wild wood - was to put some pigs on the land to help keep bracken down and give us some meat, but as we live 10 miles from the woods we're wondering whether our distance from the animals makes this a non-starter? There's no way i could justify the fuel/carbon footprint of a 20 mile per day trip to go and check on them.

What sort of space should we be allowing for them? Some of the reading I've done talks of rotating them around the land, sowing feed crops behind them. This sounds perfect. But I've also read that they are escape artists...

Final dumb question, what about water? Would onsite harvesting be sufficient or would we have to import that too? There's a mini lake on our land so we could use that, but it'd need pumping to where I'm thinking of keeping the pigs.

[HappyHippy]

Hi and welcome to TAS 

You'd be looking at visiting your pigs twice a day (minumum) to feed them and to make sure they have water and depending on the quality of water in your lake you might need to take water on site for them.
Some breeds are more prone to trying to escape than others (but there's an exception to evey rule  ) generally a lop eared breed (Large Black, Old Spot etc) will be less inclined to wander as they can't see where they are going as well as the prick eared breeds (Tamworths, Berkshire, Middle White) but providing you've got a good stock fence with either a run of barbed wire or electric tape along the bottom, and your pigs are well fed, have plenty of space and aren't bored they shouldn't try to escape.
For a couple of weaners, a third to half an acre should be plenty of ground to take them from weaning to slaughter size at around 6 months without rotating their pen (obviously depending on weather and ground conditions - if it's wet, you'll maybe need to move them)
HTH
Karen

[Sylvia]

Is there no way you could live on-site, at least whilst your pigs are reared?  A caravan or something?

[rispainfarm]

I agree, its a wonderful idea to keep them in the woods,  but as HH says they will need to be checked twice a day at least. If once a day, anything could happen to the pigs such as injury or escape and you wouldn't know until 24 hours later.

[deepinthewoods]

8 acres of well coppiced hazel woodland could without doubt be a good earner in its own right.

hello and welcome to tas

[PigManDan]

You lucky lucky man

I'm sure thats the type of land we all dream about in a perfect world!

Good luck and I hope you go for it

[Marches Farmer]

Holme Lacy College (Herefordshire) does a course on Pigs in Woodland.

[Sbom]

Or find someone closer to the wood who would enter into the piggy venture with you?

[chrismahon]

We live in ancient woodland and I thought it would be perfect for pigs. My concern was the cost of fencing to enclose half an acre. How high does it have to be and what sort of wire? Thought I could hang it in front of two straining wires run between trees as we are building a chicken enclosure along similar lines.


I will be popping over to the UK regularly and can get the fencing over there -too expensive here definitely.

[rispainfarm]

Something worth thinking about, have you checked with your council that you are allowed pigs in the woodland. We had a customer who was having two meishans to put in his woodland then after doing the fencing etc, received a visit from the council who told him he was not allowed to have any animals in the wood whatsoever. This was in kent. he had no idea there was a covenant on the place.