Bailing practice on the sow and young

  • Recently I brought the sheep down to the house for lambing. So each time they grazed out one block I would leave the gate open for them so they could walk through to the next paddock as they wanted. The sow and her piglets were quick to work this out and started exploring a bit further afield.

  • While I was working during the day they must have been stiring the dogs up in their kennels. So on my first day off when the sow tried coming into the dog kennel paddock they got rounded up and sent packing back to their own block.

  • This happened three times before the sow decided it would be better to explore in a different direction. When the dogs were working the sow and young they did not have muzzles on but kept their distance well as not to stir the pigs up to much. This is the kind of pressure that I like to see as this way no one gets hurt and the pigs are more likely to stick together.

  • In this footage you can see how Fog is indicating to me that the pigs are in the scrub in front of him. It’s not untill Rastus barks that things heat up.

  • In this footage you can see that the sow knocks over one of my pet lambs that had walked down with me. Because the dogs don’t put to much pressure on the pigs they would prefer to stay together.

  • In this footage you can see when one of the small pigs charges out the dogs back off. This is not because the dogs are scared of the small pig but they know that I don’t want them grabbing any pigs because then we would only end up with the one pig.

  • This footage is showing the three younger dogs bailing a young saddle back boar out in the wild without harming it.