One of the questions I get most often about having a pet pig is about the common mistakes people make when bringing one home.  This is a great question to know the answer to before adding a pig to your family.  I love when I see people doing their research!  So lets dig into the answer.

Common Mistakes

The first mistake I see a lot when someone brings a piglet home is spoiling it.  Running to check on him/her with every whine, whimper or squeal.  Spending all of your time together is going to teach the pig that they are your only priority and that you will spend every second with him for the rest of his life.

In order to avoid this mistake, its important to be balanced.  Spend an hour or so together and take a break.  By doing this, you are able to bond well with your new pet but also let them learn how to be alone.  Its also important to correct any bad behavior like biting, head swiping or painful rooting on your body.

The second mistake I see a lot is when new owners respond to every squeal.  Pigs are master manipulators.  They are smart enough to realize that squeals get them results.  They will use that like a weapon.

In order to teach a pig not to squeal, the best thing to do is completely ignoring it.  If they get any reaction at all, they win and will continue to do it.  By ignoring them, they learn that they get nothing – not food, not treats, not attention.  Nothing.  It works!  But it can be annoying until they get the point.

Mistakes Three and Four

The third mistake is feeding treats from your hands or feeding from your plate, refrigerator or table.  When pigs are fed from human hands, they begin to associate those hands with food.  They then become a biter and they have sharp teeth so it hurts pretty bad.  The way to prevent this is by never feeding a pig from your hands until they are old enough to understand that human hands do not always mean food.

Pigs are so smart that if you feed your pig from your refrigerator, table or your plate, they are going to realize there is food there and they wont let up until they can get into the fridge on their own to eat whatever they want or stand there and scream until you figure out what they want.  It only takes one time – they are too smart!!

The way to stop this from happening is by never starting in the first place.  That doesn’t mean you can’t ever feed your pig a treat in the kitchen, it just means you have to be smart about it.  Wait until the fridge is closed and you walk away from it.  Wait until your plate is in the sink and you walk away from the counter.  Then make your pig work for it… spin, sit, jump.  Whatever the trick is will teach them that you are in charge of the food and they need to listen in order to get the much beloved treat.

The number four mistake is a big issue to keep in mind right from the beginning.  Never, never, never start something that you don’t want to do FOREVER.  Some examples would be:  letting your pig sleep in your bed, allowing them in every room of your house, allowing them on the couch, not crating them when you leave, not using a harness, running to feed them first thing in the morning, not correcting naughty behavior.  Its important to make rules and stick to them.  A pig will test every rule and boundary over and over.  But if you stick to the rules, eventually they will learn the rules too.  It doesn’t mean they won’t try, it means that they will try less and even accept some of them.

In Conclusion

Pigs are extremely smart.  They have been compared to a 3-year-old toddler in what they can comprehend.  Intelligence in an animal can be a wonderful thing… but it can also be annoying.  An intelligent animal knows what it wants and knows how to get it!  That is what a pig does.  But if you go into pig ownership knowing these four common mistakes and know how to avoid them, its much easier for everyone in the long run.

For more tips, see my YouTube Channel.