Hair today…gone tomorrow!

If you spend any time with pigs, you’ll notice that sometimes they have hair…and sometimes they don’t. That’s because pigs do something every spring called “blowing their coat”.

All pigs blow their coat without exception, and they all do it at their own rate in their own special pattern. If you’re not familiar with this process, it can be a bit scary to see a pig lose all their hair – sometimes quite quickly. You may think that it’s due to an illness or nutritional deficiency, but it’s not. It’s just due to a pig being a pig.

The annual “blowing of the coat” usually starts mid-May when the weather begins to warm up and by the end of July…NAKED! Completely naked! Not a hair is left. And all of this hair falling out is an itchy process for a pig. We will often see them scratching against fence posts, so we help them out with regular brushing and loving scratches. Of course, this baldness is just temporary. The hair will gradually grow back and by the time the cold weather settles in, the pigs have all their hair back where it belongs…until it all begins again the following spring.