Feral pig populations are exploding across the Merriwa district, with farmers calling for a coordinated and adequately-funded approach to halt the destructive march of the beasts.
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Peter Bishop Jnr, of Kuro-Kin Wagyu, an 8500 acre property, said feral pigs were reaching unprecedented numbers.
He said his father, Peter Bishop Snr, had never seen pigs on the property when he was younger, and they first seemed to appear around 2006, when drier conditions forced them down from higher country.
“We hired an LLS (Local Land Services) trap and got 17 pigs on the first night,” Mr Bishop Jnr said.
“We get hunters out weekly and they easily get six or seven pigs.
“Data provided by the LLS on a pig shoot on properties north-west of Merriwa over a six-day period showed there’re were 3000 pigs shot over 23,000 acres.
“The year before that privately organised pig hunts netted 374 pigs in one day, directly north of Merriwa.
“There needs to be coordinated approach to controlling pigs, and unfortunately there isn’t.
“We need to follow the lead of the local wild dog associations,” he said.
Mr Bishop said adequate funding was hard to come by with cuts to the Caring for our Country program.
The carnivorous creatures wolf down baby lambs and have been known to eat calves.
“They do incredible damage to crops. We had a paddock sown to oats, about 100 acres, the very next day 25 acres were rooted up. They can be quite destructive,” Mr Bishop said.
Merriwa sheep farmer Chris Kemp of The Kurrajongs, said pigs were a huge issue.
“We have been battling with pigs for five months, we’ve just built heaps of traps, you could spend your whole life going after them, it is time consuming,” Mr Kemp said.
“The biggest problem when you are running sheep is that the pigs go right up behind the ewe when they are lambing and eat the lamb as it emerges. They annihilate lambing percentages.”
Mr Kemp said he had lost up to 500 lambs to feral pigs.
