EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

Just copied and pasted this from an article from the Houston Chronicle!!

"Land and vegetation are not the only victims of feral hogs. In some areas, livestock and wild animals suffer. The omnivorous swine will greedily kill and eat young sheep, goats and deer fawns."


Anyone have thoughts on this????? I am a bit sceptical I must admit! Who knows they might!!! Hogs are crazy!!
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They would have to be absolutely starved out or adapted  to it.  But hogs in a blood frenzy are like piranhas.  But to actually take down and kill, not likely. Its genetic to forage or scavenge to eat.  With that said they have a hard time turning away from fresh blood.......of the own kind even.

I promise you, they will eat just about anything they can get in their mouth. I have seen them eat possums, chickens and dead cows. Pulled up on a dead, bloated, stinkin cow one night and could see its belly movin. Shined a spotlight on it and all of a sudden a small boar came running out of its rib cage licking its lips. Wouldn't doubt them eatin any of that, but probably only a rare occasion.

Agreed. Chances of them goin on the attack and killing live animals, slim, but not impossible. Possibly a freshly droped new born, say with in minutes, maybe. Foraging on already dead animals, yes.

You shouldn't be skeptical at all. That is the only reason I got into hog hunting with dogs to begin with.  4 years ago we lost seven calves in our canyon pastures in marble falls. I'm not saying they were all lost to hogs but I know for a fact two of them were because I rode up on it happening after it was far to late to do anything. Now I have been hearing stories on rattlesnakes not rattling because of hogs eating them?!

About 15 years or so ago i was building the walmart on 45 in webster and there was a farmer right behind the walmart land that had several of his cows killed by a big boar. The farmer told us that the hog would graze right up next to a cow and get right up under it hook it and run backwards..... As soon as the cow went down he would eat the internals. The farmer said he had shot at the hog a whole bunch a times. Anyhow our superintendent at the time was a big deer hunter and brought a 30 06 he put one in the boar one morning and it ran off. Two days later he brought a 338 and put the boar out of the cow eating business. He had the head mounted and said when he skinned it out the hog had a ton of slugs stuck in his shield of various calibers. That hog was probably in the 300lb range.

If rattlers ain't rattlin cause of hogs then none of em would rattle. Javelinas been around Texas a lot longer than hogs and I've watched em in the deer stand play with em tossin em in the air. That don't make much since to me

Ill take your word for it. I'm not gonna test the theory. Lol

lol I don't blame you
accordin to them big wig scientists and biologists none of us that grew up in the woods knows anything though

  I raised an old pinto sow that we trapped as a baby that I raised  and that sow was a professional chicken killer watched her leap in the air and catch a couple on different occasions as they tried to get clear of her  lol  a cow down having a calf when a sounder comes on her the calf wont make it . turkey hens setting a nest is a gonner as well as the eggs . hogs are opportunistic omnivors and will eat anything handy  .

Lol if you dont believe it yall have not seen it yes hpg can and will kill animals especially young because they are not as fast.   Hogs love blood dont believe it come to my pig pen with any type of meat or what ever they will eat it fast and are not starved. 

as a kid we raised all kinds of animals and I have seen our hogs kill and cotton mouth snakes that came to their mud wallows in the dry season, just catch the snake and shake them a little while and eat them whole...We had one hog that learned to let the chickens fly in to his pen to help him eat his corn...the hog ignored the chichen until the chicken got between him and his shed and then he turned on her and of course the chicken would run/fly straight into a trapped corner and he would have chicken for dessert...

When I have a shoat or small hog I feed meat and the hog. Will scarf it down

We would feed pen hogs deer trimmins. they'd eat it all bones and all. Always made em mean an crazy by my experience.

But i cant see one running a cow (etc) and killing it

Had a friend in East Texas be hired to catch a hog that had been ramming the rancher's pregnant cows causing them to abort then the hog would eat the remains. Said that hog was the biggest one he had ever caught with his american bulldogs and he says he has seen his own hogs grab rattlesnakes and cottonmouths and eat them up real fast like they were spaghetti.

I have seen it first hand . Not my cows but a neibor has reg angus cattle . I was looking to see if hogs were coming in to a feeder . seen a cow  break water right after about 20 hogs came out of the creek and circled all around her . I went out there to run them off . They ran me off . I called the owner he came down and shot three. The cow had already calved before he got there . We went out there the calf was alive but the navel cord was pulled out plus the guts. They had been eaten .

Hear in aus we have alot of trouble with pigs killing lambs in lambing season a newborn is pretty helpless,

I seen abunch of hog tracks blood n white n tan deer hair never found any remains other that a lil hair. Id say they demolished the deer.  But as said before I highly doubt they attacked it or chased it fown

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              did the same thing raised one from a baby,my boar goat babys started missing jumped the neibor about his dogs really thought it was the dogs the next night found a nanny having twins. went back the sow was eatting the baby goats she ate probly 8 kids before we found her doing the crime she was not starved was a fat fat hog.she made some fine BBQ.                               had to appolagize to the neibor too

  yes they will  . I threw several still born calves in my hog pen and you could not tell I had done it . nothing left scrap of hair ,  bone ,  hoof  nothing   .

I have a book about ranching in South Texas before the civil war..... I forget the title.  Back in those days the market was for the tallow and hides.  There was very little market for the beef.  They would slaughter the beeves for the tallow and hides and had the rest of the carcass including the beef left over and nothing good to do with it.  There was no good way to preserve it in a large scale, and not enough people around to eat all of it at the time, so it was all just waste product.  The book states that one man who was very involved in slaughtering cattle down there had a herd of 1000's of free range hogs along the S. Texas coast.  He fed the beef and guts to his hogs.  Of course one good south Texas dry spell and the hogs get hungry it would not take them long learn to eat beef.

There is no doubt that hogs like to kill and eat snakes.  They are often times easy to catch for a hog.  The adults seem to not be affected by the venom all that much.  I don't know about piglets though.  I am also willing to bet that the killing of snakes is an opportunistic/defensive thing a good deal of the time.  I tend to think that there is some element of killing them because the recognize them at vermin.  Hogs may recognize a snake as potential danger to their young and kill them for that reason. They Might as well just go ahead and eat them while they are at it.  haha

As far as predating on livestock goes,  "Per capita" it does not seem to be that common.  Compare the large number of hogs in cattle country to the small number of instances where livestock was seen first hand to be killed by hogs.  Ranchers expect high % calf crops, they pregnancy check the cows,  they know what cows are bred and it is rare and noticed when calf crop % are low.  Hogs predating livestock happens,  Its just not common.  Most likely it is far less common than livestock losses to coyotes or stray dogs.  That in its self is not all that common.  I definitely  don't worry about hogs killing calves born to the cattle that I take care of, although it could happen to me tomorrow.  But I've got a good solution if it does.  Stray dogs yes, but hogs not so much.  My grandpa has had a commercial cow/calf operation his whole life and raised thousands and thousands of calves and he has never experienced loss to a hog.  Hogs may learn to eat still born calves by opportunity and a few of them go on to predate live once.  Just not that many in my opinion.

Waylon   

i agree waylon . where can i get a copy of that book ?

I went back and looked at the book.  It was actually Capt. King (king ranch) that had the hogs and the book reports 5-7000 hogs.  :o

Its called Vaquero of the Brush country.  By Frank Dobie.  As with all of Dobies books its well written and factual.

i have never seen with my eyes a pig kill any livestock and eat it but i do know that they r scavengers if theres a carcass they can consume  bone and all with no problems i dont know about any predator hogs that r out huntin meat everynight, i have however seen a cow calfing and the cow still alive calf dead and we watched a bout three thirty pound hogs climb out of of the live cow, bout the groses thing i ever seen. but with the way the hogs change you never know just a little skeptical myself

Yes, we lost 5 or 6 calves six years or so ago to hogs. My grandad kept telling me hogs were killing these first calf heifers  calves. I didnt believe him till I went out there one night spotlighting and saw a cow that had just calved walking, her brand new calf walking behind her and about a 230-240 lb boar right behind the calf. Needless to say I shot and killed it, we havent had any trouble since though.

thanks , waylon .

and yes folks, hogs will eat anything . sometimes they will kill to eat . they won't hunt down and kill like wolves but they will kill the easy prey .

when i was a boy , the oldtimers wuold tell the story about the guy that lived on this place that i was born on before my granddaddy bought it - and then my daddy bought it from him .

mr. olivers son was epileptic and prone to seisures . one day he was feeding hogs and had a seisure and passed out .... when they found him the hogs had eaten his eye balls  and started on the rest of him . he lived , but just barely, and was blind from then on .

these were tame hoggss !!

Chicken eaters for sure .

pigs killing new borne lambs is a real problem here in nz once they cotton on to it . usually a lone pig will kill 20 to 30 lambs a nite the get so cunning its not un common for the pigs to wait until the lamb has had its first drink of milk

speaking of milk...when I was a little kid I was at my grandpa's house and he kept a jersey milk cow...well out in the pasture I saw two of my grandpa's shoats sucking on the cows teats and drinking the milk...

Smart shoats lol

Got on in the pen now healing up . Out of a White brahma cow they chewed him up bit. Tail gone and sheath chewed on some. But the worst was the big holes in lower leg made from cutters. His momma probably run them a ways I know she ain't scared of nothin when she got a calf. I think they come for the after birth like a buzzard. Weak calf either will take advantage

We killed a sow one time that had some pigs. Two of these we caught and put them in the pen with a couple of really big tame sows. One sow stomped on a pig, pulled it half in two and eat one half. Then she reached down and got the other half and eat it. She did exactly the same thing to the other pig.

This sow was rolling fat and not starving.

same here bud we put the cow in the stantion to milk . Three of our pigs came in and started nurcing . They got pened up that night . Lol

back in the early 1990's Lewis Ross used to write a column in the Full Cry magazine for the Southern Blackmouth Cur Breeders Association...around that year he wrote about a big boar that was killing cows...One morning he got a call to bring his hog dogs and catch a boar that was chasing a cow...the cowboy heard the cow bawling in distress and when he went to check it was a big boar chasing her... as soon as Lewis got the call he loaded up some curs and a walker hound and he met up with the cowboy...he put the dogs down on the track and they rolled out...Lewis was on horseback and was carrying a 22 rifle with him...8 miles later and about 15 shots later and 5 or 6 broken bays he finally killed the hog...I don't remember the exact details but it went something like I wrote...

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