Well, the day finally came. Integration Day. Big Marie our resident sow is officially fully retiring (for reals this time) and it was time for her to join our gilts Red Jamie and her daughter Claire.
A quick trip down memory lane on Big Marie: When we got her over two years ago, she had up until that point been a solo pig. Aside from when she was rearing a litter of piglets, that was the case here as well. With the addition of new gilts we are retaining for breeding, and the feeder pigs we raise for meat, we weren’t going to keep Big Marie separate too. She needed to join the rest of our breeding stock if she was going to stick around.
Doing this isn’t as simple as just putting them all together and walking away. Well, it could be, but it could also take a very nasty turn very easily. Some pigs will brutally fight and if you’re lucky, they are only bloodied and beaten up a bit. I have heard first hand accounts of some pigs killing each other when integrating. If this was the case here, Nick and I both know that there is nothing we could do but watch if 1,500 pounds of pig are duking it out to the death. It’s a very scary thought.
Pigs (like most other animals) have a pecking order that they need to sort out. When you throw a new animal into the mix, it upsets the current order and things need to get re-established and settled amongst themselves. While there is nothing that we could have done to make 100% sure that without a doubt nothing really bad would happen, we took some precautionary steps to help ease everyone into the integration and minimize the chance of a really bad scenario as much as possible.
Look But Don't Touch
Like I said previously, aside from when she had a litter, Big Marie has always been a solo pig. So, I was worried about her not only because of her physical size advantage and ability to hurt Claire or Red Jamie, but I didn’t know what kind of social skills she possessed or lacked. She didn’t know what it was like to be a part of a passel. Would she just instinctually know how to act? Would her otherwise very mellow and laid back personality suddenly shift towards the aggressive? Or, would she just not care and be indifferent?
After weaning her last litter, we moved Big Marie back to the woods into a paddock adjacent to Claire and Red Jamie. The only thing dividing them was a three strand electric fence set up. They could see each other, smell each other, and to an extent, interact with each other. This is the closest contact Big Marie has had with other pigs, and we wanted them all to get used to each other. Being able to see and interact with each other all day every day allowed them to get familiar with and used to each others presence.
We kept them separate like this for two full weeks, and by the end of that time they were completely indifferent to each other and it was old hat.
Keep the Hormones Out of It
At this point Claire and Red Jamie are both well over a month post breeding and pregnant (yay!). Big Marie on the other hand, is fresh off of weaning her last litter of piglets. So, during that two week transition period where she has been adjacent to them, her hormones have been all over the place. Not only has she been extremely hangry from having her food cut back from a lactation to a maintenance ration, but she also went into heat shortly after moving into her new paddock. In my experience, this first heat cycle post weaning is always a bit on the extra crazy side. It always seems to me like the proestrus phase is way longer, and more exacerbated and volatile than normal. Simply put, she is out of her mind with hormones and I don’t even want to be in there with her. This again is being compounded by how incredibly hangry she is, I’m sure.
Nothing is ever easy to do with pigs when they are in heat, so I wanted to make sure that this was not a factor whatsoever when integrating. I wanted that first cycle to be over and long passed, so that we weren’t dealing with any extra crankiness thrown into the mix adding more stress to the situation.
Other Key Factors
In addition to the factors mentioned above, there are some other key things I took into consideration that I feel are just as important:
- Keep the food out of it as much as possible and always do the full integration when everyone has had a nice big breakfast. Food will only be another thing to fight over, and it’s a good reason to fight too.
- Give them as much space as possible. When integrated, the area that Claire and Red Jamie are in combined with Big Maries paddock is about 1.5 acres. Even if it’s not sunshine and rainbows at first, all of this space makes it so they can get away from each other if they want and they aren’t forced to be together. Keeping them tightly restricted will only cause more fighting and issues. We also have two shelters, (one in each other their former “separate” areas) so that again, they each have their own space to go to and don’t have to fight over one.
- Personality and the animal’s breed also plays a pretty big role in how rough or smooth your integration will go. Some breeds (and individuals) are naturally more aggressive than others, while others are more docile. Personality is always something I harp on with any of our animals, and is another reason why we stick with the heritage crosses with pigs. We like our laid back ladies.
The Big Day
So, after two weeks of being near each other and used to each others presence the big day arrived. Big Marie’s heat cycle was long over, and her hangriness was starting to subside. It was time to officially integrate. So, we fed the ladies a nice hefty breakfast to make sure that they were extra satisfied with full bellies. Once everyone finished their prospective dishes, we removed the three lines of fence that divided their paddocks and hoped for the best.
Like I said before, there really is nothing that can be done by humans once you’ve reached this point. You just have to let them sort things out for themselves, and hope they are able to get it all out of their system with as little physical harm as possible. Blood can and usually will be drawn. They’ll bite, chase, and knock each other around. This is all normal. There is no way to sugar coat it, it sucks to watch your animals beat up on each other. But again, it’s just the way it is and you just have to hope for the best.
There were some initial squabbles that were to be expected. But for the most part, Big Marie didn’t want to be bothered by Claire and Red Jamie. True to form, she was just doing her thing and taking in the new space. Claire and Jamie were way more interested in her than she was in them. There was some pushing, chasing, some biting (as seen below), and only a little bit of blood. The interest in each other only lasted for about an hour, and then everyone basically went back to their regularly scheduled day of wallowing and napping.
By dinnertime less than twelve hours later, they were eating within eyeshot of each other followed by a post dinner wallow session. It was like they had been living together all of their lives. I am extremely happy with how well the integration went, and I don’t think there is one thing I could have done differently to make it go smoother than it already did. Considering the fact that I had two pregnant gilts that are under 400 pounds integrating with a 900 pound sow, I’d say it went swimmingly.
Now all three ladies will spend the remainder of the summer back in the woods together. Come late summer, we will have to move them back to the farrowing house in preparation for Red Jamie and Claire’s farrowing. Jenny, the gilt that I retained from Big Marie’s last litter is growing out with her brother and sister that we are raising to harvest this fall. Once she has grown and is big enough to handle herself, we again will have to go through this again when we integrate her in with Red Jamie, Claire, and Big Marie to make one big happy family.
Happy Integrating,
hi Kate!
we already got a boy (castrated) and we just added a girl to our pig family! I red about the problem with the heat and I don’t want to risk… do you think maybe an other boy will be better?
I’m not sure what risk you’re talking about. I have kept barrows and gilts together many times without issue!