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["Richard Moyer" <ramoyer@gmail.com>]

Tom,

Thanks for the link.  Am working on a farm where we had both hogs and piglets in two different orchards.  Indeed, the hogs ate all drops during the summer, though the Easter freeze suppressed the amount of fruit.  And no noticeable damage to the mature trees. 

 

But in a young orchard with 2 year old trees, that was a different story.  One pear tree was rooted out of the ground, and others had bark damage from chewing.  The owner here is more interested in raising hogs than fruit trees, so we left them there for the duration.  We did have a feeder in the orchard, so they did not lack calories or protein.  They were just being hogs.

 

From experience last year, we prefer turkeys, ideally more mobile breeds than broad-breasted bronzes and whites.  The turkeys ate all drops on their side of the fence, interrupting pest life cycles.  Turkeys do not shred weed-suppressing mulch as badly as chickens nor root like hogs.  They kept the grass trimmed, instead of inverting the sod.  Chickens would peck on the drops, but generally not swallow the cores.  Turkeys gulped it all down, killing those maggots in the middle.

 

Richard Moyer

Elk Garden, VA