Reasons to be wild about feral hogs
Olga Dib knows feral hogs have a bad reputation. But the animal rescuer would still bet the farm that Piggie the feral pig will make a great therapy animal.
“He’s super-smart and super-funny and so friendly,” said Dib, who owns and operates Molino de Sueños Animal Rescue and Sanctuary in Bigfoot, 45 minutes southwest of San Antonio. “He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.”
He certainly has a lot of heart in such a big package. At 3 feet long and more than 100 pounds, the nearly 1-year-old Piggie bounds up like a giant bristly puppy, nudging his thick rubbery snout into the backs of people’s legs as if giving them a tough yet tender massage.
Dib said Piggie already has helped one of her friends with her back pain. And Piggie also has helped Dib’s two potbellied pigs, Martin and Matilda, become more social around people, all while making himself at home at Dib’s 20-acre compound that also houses several horses, dogs and a llama.
But on the other side of the coin, this is same exotic species that causes more than $1.5 billion in property damage and control costs a year, according to the Department of Agriculture. Feral hogs are notorious for destroying crops, landscaping and wildlife habitats, especially in Texas, where more than 2 million wild pigs roam.
And as development in San Antonio and other cities continues to push the urban outskirts further into their ever-lessening habitat, feral hogs are an increasingly visible presence.
Yet even this notoriously destructive animal has its charms.
“They are very gregarious and very intelligent,” said Lynn Cuny of Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation. “And again, through no fault of their own, they’re in a situation that they did not create. There’s no malice that’s motivating their behavior. They’re simply living and surviving the way that nature built them to do.”
Here’s a closer look at Piggie and his fellow feral pigs. They’re pigs, not javelinas.
Feral pigs (Sus scrofa) are a lot like domestic pigs you’d see on a farm, only untamed and thinner, with longer tusks and coarse hair. They can get mistaken for the collared peccary, better known as the javelina, but javelinas are smaller and often gray or black with no tail.
Feral hogs can grow to around 5 feet long and stand around 3 feet tall on all fours. Most weigh around 75 to 200 pounds, though they can weigh up to twice as much.
Blame a conquistador for this unwelcome export.
The feral hog first trotted into what’s now Texas in the mid-1500s thanks to Spanish explorer and conquistador Hernando de Soto, who brought the pigs for trade. Several escaped into the wilds of the New World.
Today, the feral hog trots across much of the southeastern United States, from Texas to Florida as well as throughout California.
A Texas-size problem. Despite the feral hog’s long history in the New World, it wasn’t until the 1980s when Texas’ feral swine population got out of hand, according to Animal Care Services. ACS attributes that to supplemental wildlife feeding and relocation for hunting, though the pigs also are very good at avoiding traps and having lots of babies.
Texas has one of the largest feral hog populations in the nation with an estimated 2.6 million.
They do millions of dollars in damage.
Like rock stars in hotels, feral hogs find ways to wreak havoc on their surroundings. In Texas alone, feral hogs ring up around $52 million in agricultural damage each year, according to Texas A&M Natural Resources estimates.
A single feral hog can significantly disturb around 6.5 square feet in just one minute, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife. That means a group of 20 hogs can damage 130 square feet a minute.
Most of that chaos comes from the swines’ downright feral appetite.
Feral hogs are omnivores that root for food with their snout. Cuny noted feral hogs have a strong sense of smell and are able to detect odors several feet deep, hence their rooting into the ground for a meal.
That causes all sorts of agricultural, ecological and good ol’ property damage, which in turn impacts farmers and homeowners, as well as native species.
Faster than they look. Don’t let their size fool you. Feral hogs can run up to 30 miles per hour, thanks to a lot of muscle packed into a lot of body.
They travel mostly at night in groups.
Feral hogs are nocturnal animals that tend to run in family groups called sounders, which typically include females or sows and their young. Sounders can range in size from a few individuals to as many as 30 members.
Males or boars tend to roam alone, though they will join a sounder to mate.
They reproduce like jackrabbits.
Mature sows have litters of four or more piglets at least once and sometimes twice a year. Then those female offspring reach sexual maturity in just six to eight months to add to the family.
No wonder feral hog populations have gone hog-wild.
Piggie likely is an orphan. Dib’s friend and fellow animal rescuer Michelle Camara in Alamo Heights brought Piggie to Dib in September, around six months after a family in Bergheim brought Piggie to Camara as a seemingly abandoned piglet. Given Piggie’s circumstances, Cuny believes he was orphaned.
“We rescue feral hogs with some frequency,” Cuny said. “We rescue our share of babies where the mother has been gunned down.”
Keep them out instead of killing them.
Legally, you can hunt feral hogs in Texas without a license. But rather than killing them, Cuny suggests blocking them from your property with reinforced fencing.
“There is fencing that will keep them out,” Cuny said. “And that is what people who are concerned about them being in their communities should look into.”
A 400-pound feral hog once invaded a San Antonio golf course.
In September 2019, Lone Star Trapping captured a mammoth 411-pound feral hog at Gateway Hills Golf Course. It took the animal removal company three men and three dogs to capture the trap-smart hog, which they then took alive to a processing center.