“Are the goats getting used to having pigs in their territory?” That is a question I have been asked and is an issue that we were somewhat worried about. It is now just over a week since we acquired 8 little pigs and put them in a paddock with the goats. You may recall that the goats reacted with terror to little pigs invading their space (see 8 Little Pigs). However, as this video indicates, they began to relax somewhat and even began to steal the pigs’ food and boss the pigs around. The pigs squeal a lot when the goats do that but don’t seem to mind too much and, like the little pig at the end of the video, can be rather persistent despite the goats’ intimidation.
For a number of days I was following the practice of the farmer from whom we acquired the pigs and put their ground corn directly on the soil. It seems rather primitive but the pigs will put their dirty feet into any container that you give them so they will be eating dirt with their food regardless of how it is fed. In fact, I have read that pigs which can root around in soil are healthier because of the minerals that they ingest.
It worked well at first to put the pig food on the ground but once the goats got over their terror of the aliens in their territory, they began to eat too much of the corn to let the pigs have much. Because I wanted to know how much the goats were getting, I changed the practice today and soaked the ground corn in whey that we get from the local cheese factory and put it in a large trough. The goats don’t like whey and left it alone for the pigs. It was something to watch the little pigs diving into the trough and acting like……..pigs! That may become the subject of another video sometime.
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