# Pigs to clear land



## brad1885 (Jan 21, 2014)

Wondering if anyone has ever used pigs to clear land. I'm looking to grow a food plot for deer where I'm not able to get a tractor to til up the soil. I'm thinking about making a movable wooden box that would be their shelter and use battery operated electric fence to keep them in. 
I've used pigs to til my garden before and they're great, just looking for opinions. Thanks. brad


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

Yes. It takes a lot of pigs to do more than just a little land. We're on steep mountain side and I don't want to wash off the thin top soil by machine clearing. We reopened old field that had grown to forest and then used hundreds of pigs to clear out couple of acre sections at a time doing mob grazing and then more standard managed rotational grazing. We mob, storm and frost seeded in this. Now it is rich with grasses, legumes, chicory, millet, etc. Took a few years.

With just a couple of pig they could do a quarter acre or so. Less rotation speed means more rooting. Plant behind them.


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## brad1885 (Jan 21, 2014)

Great. Thanks


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## Buckles (Dec 14, 2013)

I have used several pigs to help me clear some land and have had some success. Although I have noticed that pigs do not really eat the heavy vines, certain weeds and the smaller brush so I have been adding some goats to it. Pigs do a great job of tilling the land and rooting up a lot and have saved me tons of work. 

Like you mentioned, I have used the portable electric netting to move them around in my areas and letting them fertilize as they clear up a section. I would do the mob seeding but this section (which is about 1/2 acre) is being prepped for a garden.


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## hemlock hamps (Jan 18, 2014)

Take pic go around a stump put holes about a foot deep add a little corn cover it, pigs will dig out the stump to get the corn try you'll like it


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## PlicketyCat (Jul 14, 2010)

I agree with Buckles: alternate goats for brush clearing with pigs for stumps & tilling.


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

I would concur with using both. However don't expect too much of the pigs on stumps. I find that they don't really rip out big stumps contrary to common perceptions. Even the drilling corn around, pouring on molasses, etc doesn't convince them. Eventually the stumps rot out. In the meantime we just hand broadcast seed around them and the animals graze around them.


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## Muleman (Nov 8, 2013)

Glad to hear the pigs don't dig out the stumps. I was starting to think I had wasted my money on the track hoe, if the pigs were going to dig them out anyway?? I know lots of people use goats, but I will tell you. Years ago we had about a dozen sheep and put them in about a 5 acre pen that was honestly so overgrown with underbrush you could not even begin to walk in it. I was absolutely amazed at how much they ate and cleared out of there in a years time. Now, I know goats are a bit easier to maintain and care for, but don't count out sheep as being just as beneficial.


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

What we have learned to do is leave the stumps in, cut low. A track hoe will pull them but half a trees mass is in the soil so by leaving the stumps we leave all that root mass in place and it rots slowly releasing nutrients over the next decade. After about ten years the stumps are gone, for the most part. Since I can't do machine work like hay or plowing it isn't a big deal - our land's too steep.


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## PlicketyCat (Jul 14, 2010)

Pigs will dig up bramble roots and brush/sapling stumps; but not a honking old oak stump  They're good for keeping a forest from reclaiming a cleared field; but not so great for turning an established forest into a plowable field.


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## Muleman (Nov 8, 2013)

I understand what you are saying about the nutrients. Everything is a compromise I suppose. The property around where I live is a combination of bluffy rock ledges, rolling hills and steep hill sides and hollers. The best way to clear land around here, which is how most do it is to clear 50' to 100' swaths going around the sides of the hills, pile all the debris in windrows on the downside. This creates a natural erosion barrier, sort of like you mentioned with your fences. This also leaves the open ground in good enough shape to bush hog and keep from simply overgrowing again. The windrows also makes great habitat for rabbits and small wild animals and windbrakes and little cubby holes for deer cattle and larger animals, including pigs. Around here in Northern Arkansas you can clear a pasture and if you do not bush hog it in about 2 years you will have to take a dozer or other heavy equipment to reclaim the field again, because the trees will be too big by that time to bush hog. Thorn trees are a real problem for us. You may call them Black locust? You may not even have them?? I know of no animal that attempts to eat them, the thorns are about 2 to 3 inches long and will absolutely ruin a tractor tire if you try to run over the small ones and bush hog it. Gotta bush hog them when they are only a foot or 2 tall to not have problems.


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## HerseyMI (Jul 22, 2012)

This year we will have about 20 or so hogs on roughly 2 acres of what was heavy brush. This is the third year with pigs on it but until this year never more than half a dozen hogs were on it. I'm hoping they totally clear it of brush this year. It takes a Lot of hogs to improve brush land. Jmo...


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

It does take a lot. If you sub-divide that two acres into strips (a simple moving cross fence) to concentrate the mob grazing they will clear it more quickly.


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