![]() ![]() ![]() That means killing a lot of swine, though a widely repeated figure - that hogs are so prolific that 70% of those in a given area must be killed each year to keep numbers stable - just isn’t right, said Kim Pepin, a research biologist at USDA’s National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, Colorado. The Texas population overall has been “fairly stable” at roughly 3 million since 2011, said Mike Bodenchuk, state director for USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS.īut statewide reduction, let alone eradication, is likely to be a long slog with tools and money available now, he said in a telephone interview. Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina put their populations at 100,000 to 750,000, though Hawaii has moved a level down. The worst-hit states - California, Oklahoma, Texas and Florida, where a runway collision with a pair of wild pigs totaled an F-16 fighter jet in 1988 - are still at the program’s highest level, with more than 750,000 hogs. Since 2014, Idaho, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Maine, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, Wisconsin and Vermont have killed their small populations of feral pigs, though the program is still keeping a wary eye out in the last six states. Some states have legalized night hunting for feral swine. Derek Chisum, who grows peanuts, cotton and wheat in Hydro, Oklahoma, figures he has killed 120 to 150 a year since Oklahoma did so three years ago. Trials this coming winter and spring will test whether birds can be kept away from dropped bait by using a less crumbly formulation, along with grates to keep crumbs out of reach and air-powered “scarymen” like air dancers used for store advertising, Marlow said.īut for now, two major control methods are aerial shooting and remote-controlled traps that send cellphone pictures when a hog sounder is inside. The poison, sodium nitrite, is a preservative in bacon but keeps the blood of live pigs from carrying oxygen. Research also continues on ways to poison feral hogs without killing other animals, said Michael Marlow, assistant manager of the USDA program. McLendon and Chapman, who continues to grow cotton and wheat and to raise cattle on about 8,000 acres (3,200 hectares) in Vernon, Texas, have both benefited from pilot eradication projects under $75 million allocated separately by Congress in the 2018 Farm Bill. Department of Agriculture’s National Feral Swine Damage Management Program has received $31.5 million since it began in 2014. ![]() Hogs return to cornfields when the crop is ripening, trampling stalks, taking bites out of ears and wallowing to cool their sweatless bodies. The animals root out rows of freshly planted peanuts and corn, leaving huge ruts that must be smoothed before the field can be replanted - weeks after the best planting time. “I can remember the first day someone called me and said, ‘You’ve got a pig in your wheat field,’ and I said, ‘No we don’t have pigs.’ That was in 2006,” Chapman said. ![]()
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