Anyone keep horses & pigs together, literally?

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diddy

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Hi everyone,

We have a couple of pet pigs who are currently living in a stable in the barn. I'd quite like to give the pigs a bit of outdoor space in the yard but this would be shared with the horses. I don't want to create a separate pen as it wouldn't really work with the space I have but was thinking of putting slip rails or something across the pigs' current stable so they could go in & out to get away from the horses if they wanted to.

Does anyone else keep horses & pigs in together? I've seen sheep, goats etc. but not pigs. But I'm not sure if this is because it's a really stupid idea(which it might be!) or because lots of horses are afraid of pigs, which isn't a problem here. At the moment, the pigs & ponies are separated but seem to like touching noses through the fence etc. The pigs do have their own paddock but I don't use it in the winter as it's the other side of the field & I think they'd be a bit lonely - they seem to like watching all the comings & goings in the barn so I'd quite like to leave them where they are but just with a bit of room outside too.

Any pig/pony experiences gratefully received!

Thank you :)

D. x
 
Not personally but I know someone who has a large pet pig living in the field with the ponies without problems. I kept a pony on a pig farm in my youth and he soon got used to living in close proximity to hundreds of pigs without it bothering him.
 
Yes one of my old yards has large pigs - horses never bothered with them and would happily share a field and a feed bucket with them.
 
I don’t keep mine together but I’ve heard of plenty that do. I’d happily put them in with my smaller two, but the cob is a clumsy lump and my pigs are quite small. They do come out for a good few hours a couple of times a week and will follow me like a couple of dogs. They’ll do absolutely anything for nuts in a bucket so easy to get back in. Chances are they’d be fine and probably ignore each other after an initial stiff.
 
In my childhood YO always reared a couple of pigs in the same barn with the horses and they never bat an eyelid. We were riding horses (mind you, working lot) on a pig farm again, no problem.
Thats why reading about fear of pig has initially taken me by surprise :)
 
We had two pot bellied pigs when I was a child and we used to let them out in the ponies' field pretty much every day. They used to get on just fine! Our neighbours had a large white sow who was taller than their standard Shetlands. She was immense! Their pig lived in an adjacent field to the ponies but again there were never any problems.

If I can ever persuade OH to let me have some saddlebacks I'd happily have them in with the horses (after a bit of exposure, since they are rather more traditional in their current views on pigs than my childhood ponies).
 
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The dealer's yard where I bought my horse has a very large pot bellied pig out with the horses (he has free range) and is very much the boss.
 
Yes we have 5 horses living out with our farmers 3 pet pigs. Sometimes when a new pony comes they are initially wary of the pigs but they all get used to them and settle. The pigs do have access to an area the horses can't get into separated by a low rail and we can close the pigs in there using sheep hurdles should we ever need to but that rarely happens. Everyone lives in harmony and our horses are not at all afraid of pigs which is a bonus!
 
Years and years ago, I kept my horse on a farm with pigs - they were never out together but Moriarty would try and bite them over the fence. The pigs loved it because, to them, it was just a very good back scratch! I think it would depend on your horses, I had a mare that would try and trample the dogs so I think she would have tried to stamp on the pigs if they were small enough.
 
Do pigs not rut up the ground badly or would this not be a problem in a larger field?
Genuine question! Know little about pigs but do remember years ago my dad deciding to read a few for pork but was unable to find anywhere to keep them due to the damage they do to the land?
 
Hi everybody,

Yay lots of pig stories! I'll definitely give it a try then. Am off to tell the boys the good news - & to put another rail round the bottom of the fence! :)

Thank you. x
 
A friend of a friend kept about 5,000 pigs on a big modern unit and had a livery yard on the same premises so some would say it's not a problem because familiarity gets over most problems.
However; my mare would plant, quiver and snort great blasts if she caught the meerest niff of a pig! It made my first hacks quite stimulating as there were several pig farms in our area, including a swill feeder - my mare learned to associate the smell of school dinners with pigs!
All horses have an instinctive fear of that smell - you will not convince them that there isn't a Wild Boar in the next bush. Ironically, there are more and more wild boar actually in the wild at the moment but I've not heard of any huge feral boar Wild Boar - yet! Don't forget, boar dig a burrow and will come charging out of it very fast - you couldn't out run one - and they have damn great tusks which they will use and they have no fear!
 
Gloi said:
Not personally but I know someone who has a large pet pig living in the field with the ponies without problems. I kept a pony on a pig farm in my youth and he soon got used to living in close proximity to hundreds of pigs without it bothering him.
Click to expand...

My second pony had lived on massive pig units for most of his life and was still terrified of them.
 
poiuytrewq said:
Do pigs not rut up the ground badly or would this not be a problem in a larger field?
Genuine question! Know little about pigs but do remember years ago my dad deciding to read a few for pork but was unable to find anywhere to keep them due to the damage they do to the land?
Click to expand...

Mine only root if the ground is soft. They are Kune Kune and primarily grazers. I think the general rule is the longer the snout the deeper they go and they dig less the more grazing they have.

My pigs summer field is fine for the horses to use when the pigs go back in their winter field.
 
I moved one my horses out of livery to my partners smallholding while I had some stables built elsewhere to save some money. We keep one large male boar as a pet and rear 5-6 weaners at a time for meat on the smallholding. I was terrified of moving my horse there with the pigs because he used to rear if we caught a mere wiff of pig if we were out riding, I was imagining a lot of charging around broken fences, legs and all sorts but he was absolutely fine! In the end he was leaning over the fence to give the pet pig a groom (who is about the size of a small Dartmoor) and when the smaller pigs inevitably escaped they were all in together (I wouldn’t recommend this for the sake of your pasture! We usually keep saddlebacks and they will root up a paddock in a day). The only time he got grumpy was if they came close to his hay, he was on a strict diet at the time and would chase/try to stamp on them. I have more recently used some pigs to clear an area of scrubland behind my new stables, the horses field backs onto the scrubland and the horses are probably more wary now because they can’t see them and can only hear/smell them.
 
my pot bellied pig used to spend the days in the horse's field. He used to stand up straight with his front legs against the side of my arab stallion. They seemed to like each other.
 
My mare was bred/grew up on a compact smallholding where they had a large pig wondering around in and amongst the horses. It seemed to work fine though the pig did definitely go through phases of digging up turf, but the owner said she just used to flatten the patch he had attacked with her truck.
 
We've had both pigs and horses for ssome years (don't have the pigs anymore though). Never ever would I let the pigs and horses out in the field together. There might be differences depending on breed of pigs, but all ours would rut up the ground and pretty soon the field would be less than ideal for horses to put it mildly.
Also pigs can't sweat and therefor needs access to mud and/or water to cool off in during summer (mud also protects them from sunburns), and I really wouldn't want to make a mudbath on the horses field.
And last but not least, some pigs a not that nice to other species. Again, there might be differences depending on breed and just individual pigs, but a lot of them have/get big teeth and can be somewhat brutish and bossy. I've seen how goats can look when sharing field with pigs even though they didn't intentionally do them harm... wouldn't want that for my horse.
 
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