Please feel free to add some things you do on your farm that seem odd to others or even yourself. That's what makes us all unique and how we all learn from others. For one, we only feed once a day...only in the morning. Why? Some research shows in other species that this helps with having daytime births. Have I found this to be true? Yes, 98% of our litters are now farrowed during the day. Coincidence? Maybe, but so far, I have no reason to change it since I've seen these results. We also raise boars in a community setting. Why do we do this? Boars that are raised alone seem to be more agitated. They break out, are more pushy, and have overall been a pain. If we have a runt boar born, we castrate and raise with a boar. We currently have 3 groups of boars. 1 group is a barrow and our 15-month and up pen. Our other is younger breeding age boars, and our last one is boars not of breeding age yet. With this setup, we have noticed we have calmer boars, our boars don't try to escape, and they overall seem happy. We also use short water tanks that they can also lay in (lots of cleaning tanks), but we choose that over the barrels and nipple set ups. Why? Honestly, because I don't want to deal with leaks or cleaning out barrels...so I'm lazy, lol. Feel free to comment with thoughts, questions, or your own experiences!
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Same! they love laying in the troughs and its an easy dump and clean water every day. I have never separated my boar from sows or babies. The only ones that get separated are the feeders. They are so gentle and sweet and docile. I just met someone over the weekend with a boar 5 moths old. He had never been out of his area that is high fenced. Never been in a vehicle. When I met them we just got him out of the cage on the back of a flatbed truck and he was laying on his side for belly rubs beside a busy interstate at the shell gas station parking lot like a little diva soaking up all the attention from 2 little girls! They are calm, sweet and tame in any situation when raised right and with good genetic dispositions! It matters.