I haven’t seen much action lately, seems like the hogs have gone on exploring, it was busy when the first came out of hibernation, but it’s thinned out a bit, however, the food still gets eaten.
I have seen courting behaviour before, but all of it was unsucessful, the female making a loud hissing noise, before the male runs off. This was the first time I’ve seen a successful pairing.
I wonder if it’s largely to do with the fact that it was Sweetpea’s first night back in the wild, and because she was rescued when she weighed 340g in November, she didn’t know where to go. So I feel that perhaps she didn’t run off as she didn’t know where to run off to, or that she was grateful for some interaction after being in captivity for so long.
I’m just disappointed I missed them when they left my garden, I want to know why they left, (did another male hog arrive?) did Sweetpea follow the male and it carried on for longer in the school grounds – did Sweetpea find a suitable nest or did she make one?
Things that I will never find out, in my mind I wanted Sweetpea to follow the male into his nest, but that’s unlikely given that they are supposed to be solitary, having said that Sweetpea’s foster carer said that this winter, she had two wild hogs in her garden sharing a hog house, one was in the main chamber, and the other slept in the entrance.
Don’t know how they tolerated that.
