ORANGE, Vt. A Vermont farmer says most of the 250 pigs that escaped earlier this month from a fenced-in area have returned with the help of a trail of hot dog buns.
ORANGE, Vt. — A Vermont farmer says most of the 250 pigs that escaped earlier this month from a fenced-in area have returned — with the help of a trail of hot dog buns.
Walter Jeffries of Sugar Mountain Farm in Orange says the fence was damaged by vandalism on Aug. 11. He says roughly 50 adult pigs and 200 piglets escaped.
He said Thursday that the vast majority of the pigs are back.
The town clerk says that some pigs can still be spotted on or along a road near the farm. She says that is creating a nuisance for drivers and walkers and could be dangerous for the pigs.
Town Clerk Angela Eastman says as of Thursday that Jeffries faces a fine of nearly $82,000 because the animals have been or are in the town right of way.
Regarding the Friday, August 30th article about the escaped pigs… I’m the farmer. Someone sabotaged our fencing. They very purposefully let our livestock out damaging the fencing in many places. This has been done to our farm before. 99% of the pigs never left my land. I also own the road. The town merely has a right of way to maintain and travel on the road. The pigs certainly did not stop people from using the road or chase people. The town clerk is making outright lies if she is claiming that.
The reality is our road normally gets about one car oan hour of traffic and because of these news articles traffic shot up 2400% but there were no incidences of conflict between pigs and people. The pigs did no significant damage anywhere – just a little rooting and almost all of that on my land. I live a long ways from anyone else. Only a small number of pigs were on the road and most of those were piglets. None of the pigs were chasing people.
It is a shame that some people in the media and town clerk have sensationalized the situation and spread lies. It is even worse that they blame the victim – the farmer, me. I am the victim of sabotage and multiple robberies which have been reported to the Vermont State police. The police already recovered a stolen pig from the home of one of the main suspects back in the beginning of August.
The police now have very good surveillance video recordings of the robbers and their vehicles as well as objects that likely have finger prints. The robberies and sabotage are likely related as this sort of thing has been going on for months. Hopefully the police catch them, convict them, throw them in jail and they have to also pay restitution to me. It would be nice if people stopped blaming the victim but instead went after the perps.
Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
252 Riddle Pond Road
Orange, Vermont 05086
802-439-6462