Since getting our pot bellied pigs a few weeks ago, we’ve already learned a lot about them: their behaviors, traits, and personalities!
I wanted to spend the time to let you know a few things that we’ve learned over the past while, perhaps including some facts that you might not have known…
- Pot bellies are very smart animals, arguably as intelligent as dogs and sometimes as personable. That is why it has become more common in the U.S. for people to keep them as pets.
- Although they are considered pets by many people today, they were originally domesticated 6,000 years ago as homestead pigs for meat in Vietnam and other Asian countries.
- When kept in confinement (like a 16 foot x 16 foot pen like we have) they tend to poop in certain areas that they have determined are the farthest away from their food, water, and sleep area. We have seen our pigs leaving their shelter to walk over to the corner where their “bathroom” is. We also noticed that during transport, when we first got all of them, each one of them held their pee until they got out of the trailer/truck/car. They realized that peeing where they were sitting would be wet for them, so they decided to hold it!
Pigs! They’ve decided that their bathroom area is over by the aluminum-walled corner.
See the poop?! - They sure can bite! I already knew that adult pigs could eat an entire person if they desired (especially the larger, standard-sized pigs), but I didn’t think that piglets would choose to bite as a defense mechanism! When we were catching them to bring them home, one of the piglets that I was holding chomped down on my upper arm, leaving a major scratch and bruise. Luckily I had on 2 layers of clothes or he definitely would have broken the skin!
Ouch! Dammit, piglet!
- Male pot bellies have tusks, just like other pigs and wild boars, unless you get them removed when they are piglets (sounds painful to me!).
Gandalf’s glamour shot. If you look closely, you can see his tusks!
- They reach sexual maturity at very young ages… Much younger than you’d expect! For example, our piglets are nearing sexual maturity! Males generally go through puberty at 3 months old and females at 3 or 4 months old. Often, breeding does not result in any litters at this young age, since even though their bodies are mature, they’re still not always fully functioning. And yes, they will breed with their fathers, mothers, or siblings unless you separate them! They definitely don’t have the same concept of “the incest taboo” that we do in the human world.
- Pigs can be weaned anytime from 1 month old to 2 months old!
- Pigs can eat almost anything, and since they are good at foraging and rooting for food, we’ve put their pen over a nasty patch of poison oak. They should dig up the roots and eat them before spring begins. Then we can plant corn there!!!
.:.