Once you can hold pigs behind a fence, the interesting question starts: what does the fence let you do with them?
That's a different job from containment. If you're still working out strands, heights, wire type and the voltage a pig needs, start with our guide to fencing pigs and hogs properly — this article assumes the fence already holds, and is about using it as a management tool.
Because pigs are unlike any other livestock on a small farm. Cattle and sheep harvest grass and leave the ground mostly intact. Pigs harvest the ground itself. They root, they turn, they manure heavily, and they do all of it faster than any pasture can recover on its own. That makes them the most powerful soil improver you can put on a piece of land — and the fastest way to wreck it. The only real variable between those two outcomes is how often, and how deliberately, you move them.
What rotating pigs actually does
Rotation with pigs isn't about giving them fresh grass — it's about controlling where the work happens and then giving the ground time to respond:
- Concentrated impact, then rest. A small cell gets worked thoroughly in a short time, then gets weeks or months to recover. Spread the same pigs across the whole property and you get even, year-round damage with no recovery window.
- Manure where you want it. Pigs on a cell deposit a serious nutrient load in one place. Move them and you've fertilised a specific strip instead of smearing it around.
- Ground preparation without machinery. On ground you intend to re-seed or plant, pigs will do the tillage — cells you're "farming with pigs" get worked deeper and more evenly than a pass with a rotavator.
- Parasite and disease pressure broken. Moving pigs off their own manure is the oldest worm-control tool there is.
- Escape pressure drops. Pigs that are moved onto fresh, interesting ground before they get bored are far less likely to spend the day probing the fence.
Read the ground, not the calendar
New pig keepers always ask "how long do I leave them in a cell?" The honest answer: decide it from the ground in front of you, not from a schedule.
Work through the outcome you want and pick the stopping point:
- Clearing or tilling ground. Leave them until the top few inches of the cell are fully worked — turned, mixed and bare. In a small cell with a few pigs, that can happen fast.
- Fattening or finishing. Aim for a managed level of disturbance: they should be getting fresh ground regularly, but the cell shouldn't be reduced to bare, puddled mud before you move them.
- Woodland or rough ground. Move on when they've taken the undergrowth and started on the soil, and don't let them ring-bark standing trees.
- Wet ground. This is the one that catches people out. Once soil is saturated, pigs stop tilling and start poaching — same animals, same cell, completely different outcome. On wet ground, shorten the stay drastically or move them off it; our wet-weather paddock guide covers the same problem for other stock.
The signals that say move now are consistent: the cell is worked to the depth you wanted, fresh manure has appeared across it, they're starting to re-work ground they've already done, or the surface is holding water.
Laying out cells with portable fence
The fence plan for pigs is simple in principle — one powered perimeter, and a series of temporary cross-fences that let you hand them a new strip:
- Square-ish cells. Pigs patrol the boundary, so a long thin cell gets trampled along its whole length while the middle stays untouched. Keep cells compact.
- Cross-fences, not new paddocks. Run your permanent perimeter once, then divide it with single portable strands. The containment guide covers strand count, heights and wire choice — the only rotation-specific point is that pigs lean and root, so cross-fence posts need to be pushed in firm and the bottom strand kept low enough that rooting doesn't lift a gap underneath.
- Front and back. The classic pig move hands them a fresh strip in front while the worked strip behind is closed off — the same "tractor" pattern used in rotational grazing with temporary fencing, just with a much higher impact per cell.
- Leave a recovery lane. Don't plan cells so that the only way out crosses ground you're trying to rest. You'll walk it every move, and so will they.
Power for a system that keeps moving
A rotation system changes your power situation in two ways: there's more fence to energise (every cross-fence adds line), and the fence is only as good as it is on the day you move it.
- Size for the whole layout, not the current cell. Voltage sags with line length and weed contact. A high-output energizer gives you the headroom to run a perimeter plus cross-fences without watching the reading drop.
- Put the energizer on wheels or on a post you can move. A 12V unit with remote and alarm suits a system that shifts every week — and an alarm tells you if a strand has gone down while you're away from that paddock.
- Test every move, at the far end. Not at the energizer. The far corner of the new cell is where a slack strand or a grass-wrapped joint shows up, and it's the corner a pig will find first. A fence voltage tester in your pocket is the single most useful habit in this whole system.
- Re-check the ground as it changes. Pigs work the soil down; a ground rod that read fine on firm pasture can read very differently on a cell of loose, dry, worked ground. The grounding guide explains why the earth side of the circuit fails first.
The part everyone underestimates: water and shade
Moving fence is easy. Moving water is the job that decides whether a rotation system survives its second month.
- Put water where the pigs are, not where it's convenient. If they have to walk back to a fixed trough, they'll spend their time in the trampled corridor between the two.
- Fence the trough, and keep the ground around it firm. Pigs will wallow any wet patch they can create. A small hot-wire square around the trough, or a concrete pad, saves the cell around it.
- Shade moves too. Portable arcs, huts or a shade cloth on skids — and in hot weather, shade and cool water matter more than the rotation does. Pigs don't sweat, and heat is genuinely dangerous for them. If you're moving stock in a heatwave, our guide to the signs of heat exhaustion in livestock is worth reading alongside this.
- Train them to the wire before you rely on it. Pigs learn a hot wire quickly and remember it. The move itself should be boring: open the new strand while they're busy eating, let them walk through, close behind them. Chasing pigs with a bucket and a lot of noise is what teaches an animal to test fences.
After you move them: let the ground answer
A worked cell isn't finished — it's mid-process.
- Rest it. How long depends on season and rainfall, but the test is whether the surface has closed over and holds together underfoot. Bare, capped or puddled ground isn't ready.
- Seed or leave it. Freshly worked pig ground is fertile and loose — ideal for a sowing, or for natural regrowth if you have time. Either way, don't put pigs straight back onto it.
- Watch for the wet-season trap. Ground that recovered in summer can be destroyed in a week of rain. Have a plan for where pigs go when the soil is saturated, even if it's a smaller, harder area you accept losing.
Common mistakes
- Buying the whole property to the pigs at once. No rest window, no recovery, no control.
- Fixed move intervals. The calendar doesn't know what your ground looks like.
- Cells so large the middle never gets worked. Pigs use the edges; big cells waste the centre and concentrate damage on the perimeter.
- Water left behind the fence line. The corridor becomes mud within days.
- Undersized power for a growing layout. Works in the first cell, fails once you've added four cross-fences.
- Testing voltage at the energizer. It tells you nothing about the far corner the pigs will actually test.
- Never training them. An untrained pig isn't contained by voltage, it's contained by luck.
The move-day routine
☐ New cell's strand already up and tested at the far corner
☐ Water and shade in place in the new cell before pigs go in
☐ Feed scattered across the new cell to draw them through, not chase them
☐ Old cell closed off and rested; note the date
☐ Walk the perimeter you'll be relying on for the next few days
☐ Log what the ground looked like when you moved — that's your data for the next rotation
The bottom line
Rotating pigs isn't a different kind of fencing — it's the same portable electric fence, used with intent. A perimeter you can rely on, cross-fences you can shift in ten minutes, power with headroom, water that moves with them, and an honest reading of the ground in front of you. Do that and pigs become the fastest way to improve a piece of poor land on the farm. Skip it and they'll do the opposite with the same enthusiasm.
For a rotation system, the high-output Q70B will carry a perimeter plus cross-fences comfortably, and our fence and wire range covers the portable posts, polywire and insulators that make cells quick to move.