When I was about the age that our oldest grandson is now, we took a family trip that included a visit to the farm of my father’s brother in northern Colorado. The place was a fairly small scale hog operation. I was fascinated by the system of pens that were spaces delineated by a single electric wire. Once the pigs got used to the electric fencing, the power to the wire could be turned off because the pigs would not touch or cross the wire. My uncle claimed that once the pigs were trained he could maintain pens with string in place of the wire, but I don’t remember actually seeing any pens fashioned out of string. Another feature of the farm was that he rotated the pigs from area to area so that he could keep the pens clean. Manure was removed from the pens with a tractor. I don’t remember how he disposed of the manure. I was a kid and I didn’t pay attention to all of the details of the operation. And it has been a long time since that trip and my memory is not completely accurate.

I grew up around a lot of farm and ranch operations. My father provided agricultural air services and later added farm machinery sales to his business. We often visited farms and ranches as part of his business. We had friends who lived on ranches and spent time visiting them. Most of the operations in our area, however, were beef cattle ranches. I did have one friend who lived on a dairy farm and my father provided milking machines and cream separators for that farm. My uncle’s pig operation was something unique in my experience.

I remember at the time knowing that hog farming had a different odor than cattle ranching. Even a cattle feedlot smelled different from the pig farm. I was thinking about that last evening because one of the neighbors of our daughter has a few pigs in their back yard and in the 80-degree evening temperatures, the odor was distinctly porcine. The odor has been a point of some neighborhood contention in the past and I don’t know all of the dynamics, but I suspect that a family home on a half acre lot surrounded by a six food wooden privacy fence provides a space that is a bit too small for the number of pigs they keep. I don’t know how many that is, but from the sounds coming from the yard there are at least several. They don’t have a tractor, so I suspect that they don’t have a system for handling manure. I don’t know how the pig areas are maintained.

What I do know is that the pigs lie next to the fence, which has several boards that are rotting at the bottom. I’ve fashioned some fencing modifications on our daughter’s side of the fence to keep the pigs from rooting under the fence. They’ve managed to make a few holes that required action to keep the pigs contained in the neighbor’s yard and the neighbor doesn’t seem eager to take responsibility. The situation got me to thinking about my uncle’s electric fencing in his operation. Obviously, I don’t think investing in an electric fence is a good idea for our daughter, but it does seem that the neighbor will need to step up their game sometime in the future to keep their animals in their designated area.

There is a 400 pound pig living temporarily in an animal shelter in Aurora, Colorado. The animal, named Fred by the staff of the shelter is an unusual resident in the facility that usually houses only cats and dogs. Staff had to purchase straw and other supplies to keep the animal comfortable as they seek a farm to become a home for it. Fred was discovered wandering the streets of the community. Several homeowners complained of damage to their landscaping by the animal that roamed freely for several days. Fred was finally captured in a bit of grass near a strip mall. It took eight people five hours to corral the pig and transport him to the shelter. Fred is not a typical pot-bellied pig often kept as a pet. No one knows where he came from, but he’s been growing somewhere for some time to have reached his size. I wonder if he started life in a small backyard operation similar to that of our daughter’s neighbors. I can imagine them having a pig get out of their fence and wandering out of control for some time without the owners responding. On the other hand, if there was a pig roaming this neighborhood all of the other neighbors would point to the house with the pigs in the back yard as the probable source.

I’m thinking that there are a few kinds of animals that are not well suited to being kept as pets. My ideas, however, are not shared by everyone. Pet stores still sell ferrets, for example. I’m not sure why anyone would want a pet that is a species that has been known to fiercely attack humans and cause injury. I guess they are interesting to observe, but I think they are best suited to life in the wild rather than captivity. Buffalo and cattle require a lot of space and aren’t really suited to back yard locations. Pigs, in my opinion, are better suited to acreages much larger than a suburban back yard.

I don’t know whether the pigs across the fence are being raised as pets or as a food source for a family. I haven’t witnessed anyone caring for them. It’s hard to see what is happening on the other side of the privacy fence. Someone must be feeding them and they are likely growing. Perhaps, like Fred the Colorado pig, they have become much larger than they were when first adopted. It is possible that the neighbors are aware that they have a problem and simply haven’t discovered a solution. They may be like that animal shelter in Colorado. Finding a home for an adult pig is not an easy adventure and it takes a group of people and a lot of time to capture and transport the animals.

This adventure, I suspect, will have more chapters in the months to come.