Hello everyone!
We have been reading TAS for a some time now with our eventual goal to have some pigs on our smallholding. Finally the time has come and we now have 4 GOS boys happy in their new pen. It wasn't all plain sailing as they escaped a couple of times the first day followed by hours of trying to catch them through hedgerows and over fields. They soon learnt to respect the electric fence though and all is well again. We expect to learn many things over the next few months and needing an electric fence training pen is definitely a lesson we'll write in stone!
We've now built them a more permanent pen with stock netting, a strand of barbed wire at the bottom to prevent them undermining it and electric strands above to keep them trained to it and stop them testing/pushing the fence as they grow. The question is, what would people recommend as a pen size? The pen is approx 150m squared (almost 10mx15m). Whilst this appears to be much more than the minimum standards I've found, I've struggled to find a clear guide for weaners to pork weight.
Our plan is to keep them in the secure pen for a few weeks to a month and then extend with electric fencing only for additional areas we want them to clear adjacent to the secure pen.
Looking ahead, we hope to have weaners again if all goes well so intend to reuse our permeant pen and rotate with temporary fencing additional areas.
Also just a huge thank you to Rosemary and Dan for sharing your experiences and setting up TAS!