Flooding and guard pigs

The Central Coast of California recently had some epic disaster level rain resulting in wide spread flooding. Our home was pretty lucky, with our location and the earthworks Sam and I did with an excavator our flood was fairly minor. One casualty was our pig pen, it turned into a muddy morass about 12 inches deep. Digger our new pig and Oreo our big pig where uncomfortable but more or less OK. Macaroon was another story, her legs are so short that she was unable to get her main body out of the water and as a result became hypothermic. Rosie found her shivering and slow to respond in the middle of the pen. We decided that the most viable option was to open the pen up and let the piggies go "free-range" out in the property. The people who have been following our blog can understand why I had sudden visions of the pigs of evil. But we felt that we needed to give our current pigs a chance and let them get to some drier land. Well all in all our three pigs are doing well and love having the entire property to run free in. The only down side is that the pigs are far more destructive than we had thought, they get bored and smash, eat, knock over, pull around, or shred anything and everything they can get their little piggy mouths on. So far they have trashed our welcome mats, the BBQ, the table saw, a sun shade, the wood pile, and all the other animal food they can find. There will be a new pig pen in the very near future in order to limit the damage.

On the plus side, we have not been locking up the chickens and ducks at night as we normally do. Despite that we have not lost a single bird, due in no small part to Sergent Oreo of the pig patrol who seems to patrol the fence line at night and chase off any of the predators that seem to regard our yard as a protein rich snack bar. We see him huffing his way around the yard at night and one night inparticular we heard a whine/bark/screech that we are pretty sure was the sound a fox or coyote makes when charged and assaulted by a 500lb pig. I keep telling Oreo that if I ever go out into the yard and find him munching on a dead coyote or fox he gets to live on our farm for as long as he wants, never to see the inside of our oven. A guard pig is a good pig.