Hi Nic,
Glad I put a smile on your face about hogs roaming in their surreal banana utopia.
Well my hog count is now up to 3 so you were right others must be being drawn in by the first ones scent so thanks for that top tip.
I also saw my first hog fight of the year last night. i was watching a hog having a drink of water when it stopped suddenly, looked up quite intensely and I knew what was probably coming next as I have seen this behaviour before. Out of the gloom the large bruiser male, the one I saw first this year and who has previous from last year, came running forth like something possessed and literally knock this smaller male flying causing it to roll in to a ball. The large male then proceeded to play football on my patio with the smaller male until it got it pinned up against the back of the house and a shrub and continued to head butt it for quite a while. It then went off and ate and drunk coming back every so often to give the rolled up hog more head butts. I also noticed it backed in to the rolled up hog and kept nudging it – I saw this last year and wondered if it was doing some sort of scent marking on the other hog? Eventually the large male wandered off and the smaller male unrolled and seemed perfectly fine so I threw out some more hog biscuits which were gratefully snuffled up (I also realised it was now way past midnight and this whole thing had been going on for an hour – time flies when your having fun!).
When I saw this hog fighting for the first time last year, and at the risk of sounding a bit melodramatic but I didn’t know it was so violent, I found it very distressing as the 2 hogs were both going at it hammer and tong before one eventually gave in and rolled up in a ball. They were literally bashing in to the patio tables and chairs and at one point one hog flipped the other as you mention above who totally lost its footing and got a right bashing as a result. I was very concerned about them both getting badly injured but I saw this happen quite a few more times over the coming days and weeks and all hogs seem relatively unscathed.
I guess it looks more dramatic than it is and they must be pretty tough cookies as a whole but I also guess they sometimes do get injured but its probably mostly their pride thankfully!
