Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
other animals or human beings, and you will want to be sure your pig is not lonely. Often, a
badly behaved pig is a bored or lonely pig, so attend to the animal's emotional needs — not
only for the pig's sake, but also because a contented pig is easier to manage. You should
provide a pig with toys, because pigs are often as playful as puppies. Suggested toys include
empty plastic trash cans they can push around, a bowling ball, or knotted pieces of rope or
strips of cloth attached to the walls of their pen, which they like to pull.
Pigs have poor eyesight, as their small, bleary eyes seem to suggest. For this reason, they tend
to be wary of new places and are easily startled. Although their wild counterparts can be noc-
turnal, modern domestic pigs lack the tapetum lucidum, or inner-eye reflective tissue, that al-
lows improved night vision, so pigs are not fans of dark places. The placement of their eyes
favors lateral vision, but they lack the fine musculature needed for sharp focusing. This means
if you are trying to move pigs, you will need to consider the effect that darkness and their lim-
ited forward vision has on them. A pig may put up a terrible fight about moving forward into
a dark building, for example, because its forward vision makes the area ahead seem frighten-
ing. However, if you use a carrier or scoot the pig forward by means of a chute with pig
boards placed close behind it and in front of it, the pig will move forward without any prob-
lem.
Pigs tend to interact with each other through their excellent sense of hearing and ability to vo-
calize, making pigs great communicators. It has been observed that pigs can make more than
20 distinct sounds that communicate meaning to other pigs. For instance, a single grunt, short
or long, seems to indicate that a pig is happy, while a pig that grunts many times in succession
is hungry. When a pig grunts several short times together, it usually means the pig is angry,
and when a pig squeals, it is an indication the pig is in pain or fear. Sows give instructions to
their piglets at feeding time and are known to make soothing noises as their babies nurse.
For all the power of pigs' ears, their most important tool is their super-sensitive snout. A pig's
snout is its fingers, eyes, and nose, all in one. The surface of a pig's snout is covered in thou-
sands of tiny hairs that aid in capturing scents. Not only can they smell out all kinds of differ-
ent foods with that powerful snout, but it also contains a structure of cartilage that they are
able to use as a sort of shovel to root around, turning over clumps of earth to expose tender
plants or grubs. They achieve a surprising degree of dexterity with their snouts, rivaling even
the elephant's remarkable “fingers” in the tip of its trunk. Although a well-fed pig does not
need to root to find food, most will do so to amuse themselves and better understand their en-
vironment, so it is best to provide them with fresh straw or hay. Sometimes rooting can be an
