Saturday evening I was bringing the tractor in from the woods with a load of firewood when I saw this rodeo in progress.

The electric fence had shorted out and the pigs escaped into the adjacent pasture with the cattle.  Pigs are cool with cattle; cattle are not cool with pigs.  (Actually, cattle can become acclimated to pigs, but they are suspicious by nature.)  You’d think that it would be the cows that would want to protect their calves from pigs, but I’ve always seen the steers show the most defensiveness.  I’m not sure why they display such strong choirophobia, since they aren’t scared of grazing nose-to-nose across the fenceline from each other.

This black steer had those pigs running laps.  I tried herding the pigs back into their pasture, but this steer kept shadowing me and spooking the pigs.  So I had to change my objectives.  The first task was to move the cattle to a new pasture.  Apparently the promise of fresh grass is more pleasing to a bovine than the thrill of chasing pigs.  Once the cattle were distracted with new food, the pigs walked back to their pasture as docily as I’ve ever seen them.  Maybe they had had enough adventures for the day and were ready to go home.