Thursday, January 15, 2009

Video of Mangalitsa Pigs Rooting



I found a nice video of Mangalitsa pigs methodically rooting up a pasture.

Not all breeds forage so vigorously.

Because of the destruction they cause, in Austria a lot of farmers keep the pigs in a pen, harvest the forage crop and feed that to the pigs in their pen. It is too expensive to let pigs destroy a good alfalfa pasture.

Here you can see how the pigs are helping to clear some land:



The decision to keep pigs behind a fence, to restrict their impact, illustrates a typical tradeoff between giving the pigs what they want versus what humans want. Pigs love to root and destroy things like plants and trees. Humans usually don't want that, but sometimes they do (land clearing), or they find a way to put up with the pigs and their behavior.

No comments: