I have been letting Earnest in with Doris and Pearly June for days at a time, and also they have been allowed out into a middle pasture for grass eating, which they of course love. By the time I bring them back to their hut at night, they fall to the ground in their piggie collapse and fall off to piggie sleep.
Doris and June are over a year now, as is Earnest. I've been tracking their cycles so hope to have piglets sometime this year, but it's a crap shoot the way I'm choosing to do it. I like having Earnest in the barnyard-he is just such fun and agreeable, and Marcella is so close to him, so for now I let him go back and forth. He seems to like his pig dates, but also likes his barnyard. When the girls aren't in heat, they pretty much ignore the poor fellow, try as he does to impress them, but they push him off, or snap at him in pig language.
The other afternoon after a day of grass eating with his ladies, Ernest was napping by the pig hut. I called him to come back to the barnyard. He always responds and runs to me. But he just kept napping. He was happy there. I felt like the mom who must witness her five year old say for the first time,
"Mom, please don't walk me to the bus today, I can do it my own self."
