water trough

[paul_j]

"I had a large sow put her jaws around my leg. I've never hit a living thing as hard as I hit that pig. I knocked her out cold. Thought for a minute that I killed her and started to look around for a knife until she woke up looked around and staggered back to her pen. I don't mind saying I was scared for my life. That pig never came close to me again!"

Hogs are dangerous. An old sow with pigs can be very defensive, and a herd boar with tusks can make a nasty wound. When the boar's tusks got big and he was aggressive with them, we would catch him with a nose loop, cinch his head to a post and break the tusks out with a big hammer. That would take the strut out of him for a while.

Someone mentioned red hogs - we raised red Durocs, along with Hampshire and Yorkshires. The Duroc sows were the meanest to deal with. The others were usually pretty docile, but still deserved respect in close quarters.

I enjoyed raising hogs. We kept around 60 head here on our little place, but I sold them all about 1980 when the market was getting close to my break-even point. When I was young, every farm in the community had hogs. You could walk outside on a still night and hear hog feeder lids banging in every direction. I don't know of any hogs within a ten-mile radius of here now.