Poor Poppy.
We finished the electric fence. She and Manu came walking out. Poppy (the Hereford Sow) touched the fence and squealed with fright, ran to the other side and got hit again, balked, backed up then headed for a corner that was made with hog panels, not electrified of course, backed into it and refused to come back out again.
Manu strolled out got smacked by the fence then he wandered over to the other side got hit again, cursed a piggie curse, then went about the business of grazing. No problems.
Poor Poppy stood in her safe corner with her head down and growled at me and refused point blank to move from there. I tried food and everything. She was there for ages – I thought she would screw up the courage but she stood with her eyes closed and would not budge.
In the end we took OFF the panel she was leaning on (pulling out hook nails that were firmly embedded in the posts with much human cursing) and released her back to her concrete pad. She rushed straight for her wallow and sunk down into the mud up to her chin and stayed there.
That evening (last night) I opened the gate to the field and let them out again. Manu wandered straight out – no problem – but Poppy refused point blank to walk through where the gateway. I was holding strawberries trying to coax her through but no dice. Monsters out there.
Poor Poppy.
Love c
The Kitchen's Garden 
27 responses to “Late in the Day”
Poor Poopy. She has to figure out where the new opportunity is. She must have read your earlier post about not being too intelligent. Lol
We train the piggies to electric wire when they’re little by running a hot wire (nine inches or so off the ground) around inside the mesh fence of their pen. That way they learn to jump back and not forwards/through the hot wire. Then we can just run a single wire on insulated tread-in posts to keep them in a section of pasture (and they follow the feed bucket ‘home’ at night). If poor Poppy didnt ‘see’ what bit her, she wont know how to avoid it poor girl.
Poor Wee Poppy got her rear stung…so not surprisd she was hEsitant
I knew your animals were spoiled rotten, but STRAWBERRIES to tempt Poppy? Now I’ve heard everything. Seriously, what is the voltage of the fence? Is it perhaps a bit too high? Mind you, anything that can stop Poppy escaping as a daily occurrence has to be a GOOD THING.
lots of love,
ViV xox
Oh poor Poppy. Keep us posted.
Oh no!! I thought of myself when you wrote about Poppy. I’ve been hurt so many times… that I refuse to get out there (with people) and I’m tenacious about it. Poor Poppy. I totally understand. 😦
My dog Kainaat peed on the pig’s electric fence, squealed like a banshee and has refused to go back in the field every since. Finally, just in the past two weeks, because we don’t have pigs at the moment and the evil fence is no longer there he has reluctantly started to come back in with me!