This Little Piggy Went To ...

... New Zealand!

How would you like to have a herd of these animals roaming around on your property?  A few weeks ago I posted a picture of the damage done to our roadside by feral hogs, and many of you have written asking if we ever caught them.  The answer is no, but they are still in our bottom land and our lessor sees them and their destruction daily.

Shortly after the hogs paid us a visit, this sign showed up on the corner of our property.  Little did I know that our neighbor, a young single mother, is now buying and selling feral hogs under a program to help rid Texas of these destructive animals.

Feral hogs are mostly domestic pigs that have gone wild, with some European wild boars that have escaped from exotic game ranches thrown into the mix.  Some experts say we have Christopher Columbus and Hernando de Soto and other early Spanish explorers to thank for bringing hogs to the New World in the fourteen and fifteen hundreds.  That's when they started taking over the countryside.  Seems like we had an immigration problem even then!  

Feral hogs resemble domestic hogs, but they are leaner and meaner and well adapted to surviving in the wild.  They are extremely intelligent.

Because their reproduction rate is unbelievably high (in just five years, two hogs can produce 44,000 offspring), controlling the population of these aggressive and unruly beasts is crucial to mitigate damages to private property and wildlife habitat as well as the physical danger to animals and humans. Male boars can weigh over 300 pounds and have razor sharp tusks.  The current estimate on wild hogs in the US is 6 million, and Texas has approximately 2 million of that number.  The next highest populated state is Florida, with an estimated 500,000 pigs.  They range through 35 states in this country and have invaded Canada.  These are not the same type of hog as the javelinas found in Mexico and the Southwestern United States.  They are much bigger! (Everything grows big in Texas, you know.)

My neighbor tells me that the hogs she buys and sells under a government program now in effect ships many of them to foreign countries, including New Zealand, where they are slaughtered for their meat.  Evidently it is  no different than the pork you buy in your grocery store, although I think in the US the FDA prohibits the sale of the meat.  I do understand that some shelters and soup kitchens in Texas buy hog meat to feed homeless and needy families and I know that locals often slaughter the hogs they kill.  It is legal in Texas for a property owner to kill hogs on their land, and hog hunting contests are quite popular here, with bounties ranging up to $10,000.  There are actually dogs being bred as hog-hunters.  I'll be looking for that breed on AKC in the next few years!  I'm sure that this is a controversial subject among animal-rights groups.  This is a photo blog, and I don't intend to get involved in political discussions, so I'm not going to go into that subject and will just  let you all have your own personal opinions on that subject.