Bringing Home Baby

Bringing home your new Kunekunes is extremely exciting! However, the transition to a new home can be stressful for pigs, who are especially smart and sensitive. Fortunately with just a little prior planning you can keep your new arrivals happy and safe while they get to know you and your farm.

I’ve helped many many customers welcome piglets and have come up with a handy checklist and guide for to-be kune owners.

Kune Homecoming Checklist

▢ FENCE: important! Strongly recommend a smaller secure transition pen made with hog panels and t-posts every 8ft. NO ELECTRIC FENCING FOR NEW PIGS— they WILL escape.

▢ FOOD: we feed Southern States’s Grow N Finish 16% pellets soaked in two parts water so it’s a porridge consistency.

▢ BOWLS: 6” high rubber bowls. One feed dish per pig plus one shared bowl for water. Eight quart (2 gallon) size is ideal.

▢ SHELTER: many style options. At least 4x6’ for two pigs. Recommended bedding: 2” of pine shavings (no cedar) covered in 4” of clean hay or straw.

▢ WALLOWS & SHADE: absolutely necessary with temps over 72 degrees.

▢ TRANSPORT: dog kennel inside a vehicle are ideal for piglets. Make sure there is ample hay/straw bedding so they don’t slip and hurt themselves.

The details:

Fencing & Transition Pens:

Let’s start by creating the infrastructure you’ll need to keep your new kunes safe. The first and biggest thing to know about relocating pigs of any age is that when they are scared or stressed they need a physical barrier to contain them. Even pigs trained on electric fencing may just charge right through it if they are panicked. This is why I absolutely do not recommend containing new pigs with electric fence, either strand or net. There’s no worse feeling than watching panicked pigs take off into the woods.

Spare yourself that horrible experience and instead, welcome your pigs home with a smaller secure transition pen made with hog panels ideally. Locate this pen near a water source, ideally under some natural shade. If you are bringing home young piglets, consider putting the pen relatively close to your barn or house to discourage predators. (Although your might worry about your new arrivals, there is no need to bring the pigs inside your house. If fact, because Slow Farm pigs are born and raised exclusively on pasture being inside would be profoundly stressful for them.)

Transition pens can be made of any sturdy fence as long as the spaces along the bottom 18” are no more than 2” wide and the fence is tight enough that it can’t be scooted under. (I’m a big fan of 12” ground staples for keeping field wire secured to the ground.) In my experience, the best material for a transition pen is hog panel. Hog panels are thick gauge metal fencing sections, 34” tall and 16’ long with close spacing at the bottom that widens toward the top. Their weight makes them impossible to flip when they are securely fastened top, middle and bottom to t-posts set every 8’. The panels can be attached to the t-posts using wire fasteners, heavy duty zip ties— or if you’re like me, baling twine. A 16x16’ transition pen made with four hog panels is adequate for a couple young pigs to get used to their new life; you can certainly make the pen larger if you’d like.

(Side note: at $25-28 per panel, hog panels are not the cheapest fencing option, but they are a worthwhile investment that you will be glad you have for vet visits, worming, special feeding, farrowing, etc.)

Keep your new pigs in their “Fort Knox” secure area for at least a week (ideally two) before introducing them to larger pastures and/or electric fencing. Kunes can be taught to respect single-strand electric fence, but for visibility and ease of use I prefer Premier 1 electric net fencing— specifically their HogNet® 10/24/12 Electric Netting which has closer horizontal spacing that’s perfect to discourage smaller pigs. Both strand and net fencing require good reliable chargers— do not expect your pigs to respect an unelectrified fence. In fact, animals can become badly entangled in net fencing if they try to cross it.

Feeding:

TYPE: Adult kunes eat standard 15-17% “grower & finisher” protein pig pellets or mash. Pregnant and lactating sows and piglets under 6 months do best on the richer 20% “sow & pig” feed. (These are NOT mini pigs. Do not feed mini pig food.)

PREPARATION: I soak my pigs’ food in approximately two parts water to one part grain so it is a porridge consistency. Soaking has the benefit of stretching the food farther, making them feel fuller, keeping them hydrated, and being a convenient way to get them to eat supplements when needed. (Around here we have to provide selenium to our sows because our soil is very poor in it.)

AMOUNT: Best practice is to halve the amounts below (which are recommended by the NZ Kunekune Society) and feed half in the morning and half at night.

Piglets 2-4 months – 1 lb (2 cups) per day
Pigs 4-9 months – 1.5 lb (3 cups) per day
Adult boar or sow – 2 to 3 lb {4 - 6 cups} per day
Lactating sow – 2 to 3 lb {4 - 6 cups} + 0.5 lb {1 cup} per piglet per day

These amounts are not law. If your pig is looking obese, reduce their grain amount. If they are looking skinny, consider possible health causes (especially worms) and increase feed accordingly. Under no circumstances should you offer kunes free choice grain or use the gravity feeders that conventional pig farmers use; kunes will become badly obese in no time.

BOWLS: pigs are competitive eaters so make sure you have a bowl for each pig. (In cases where there’s an especially bossy pig, you might even want to have one more bowl than pigs.) Rubber bowls are easier on their teeth and don’t leech toxic zinc like galvanized metal “hog pans”.

MANNERS: yes pigs can and must learn table manners! Piglets are very open to learning, and the work you put in now will save you getting knocked around by 300lb pigs later. Here’s the secret: do not feed pigs until they are calm. I teach my pigs by taking my time setting up their bowls and talking calmly to them while I do it. Then with the feed bucket in my hand and posed to pour I stand there and say “SHHHH” until they are quiet. As soon as the pigs are quiet, dump the food in the bowls. In the beginning, you are waiting for just a moment of quiet. As they learn, you can get them to wait longer and longer.

Water:

Water is very possibly the most important thing to get right with your pigs because dehydration kills. Pigs need clean water every single day, and during warm months they need water to soak in to cool off.

Wallows don’t necessarily have to be more than 6” deep but they should either be empty-able (like kiddie pools or mud pans) or maintainable with vinegar or a bit of bleach (like hand dug wallows). Natural bogs can fester with bacteria, parasites, and biting insects, so use with caution. Ideally wallows are located in a shady spot or have a shade cloth over them.

In addition to wallows, pigs need clean drinking water. Given how short kunes are, water bowls or pans should be 6-10” deep. Water bowls will need to be emptied and cleaned daily— pigs are great at making their water bowls filthy and dumping them so be attentive. Another option is water barrels fitted with drinking nipples. Water barrels are an excellent way to offer clean water provided you keep the barrels clean. A dirty barrel is an illness waiting to happen.

Shelter & Shade:

Kune shelter needs are pretty basic. Shelters need to be dry, wind-blocking, and well bedded. A simple A-frame hut will suit them well all-year round provided it is located on well-drained ground. They don’t need bedding in the warm months, but in the winter we use several inches of pine shavings topped with a couple feet of hay. Wheat straw is also good bedding BUT we find that our pigs shift through it to find any bits of wheat left and in the process kick all of the bedding out of the hut.

In summer, providing shade is important. Especially in the heat of the day. It’s hard to beat trees for the best shade, but you can make shade structures as well using tarps, cloth drop cloths, and t-posts.

Welcoming Your Kunes