There is a pig problem in Connecticut.
It’s a serious issue in the small agricultural town of Sterling on the Rhode Island border, with a population of about 3,500, at least for the residents who have had their property destroyed when as many as 20 pigs roam onto their lawns and gardens and cows eat their hay.
It’s gotten to the point where a lawsuit has been filed, by seven Sterling residents and a farmer who leases land. against Radical Roots Farm on Newport Road and its owners, Ryan and Alycia Salvas of Canterbury.
There is also a bill in the General Assembly, introduced by the Environment Committee, that would establish a task force to strengthen the state law against allowing animals to roam freely.
In addition to the pigs, the Salvases own cows that allegedly eat the leasing farmer’s hay.
The problem, according to the lawsuit and town and state officials, is that the Salvases have allegedly failed to put up appropriate fencing to keep their animals from roaming off their property.
“What it amounts to is an 80-acre parcel of land that some folks bought from Canterbury and named it Radical Roots Farm,” said First Selectman Lincoln Cooper.
“There are no buildings of any kind, so there’s no structure,” he said. “There’s no shelter. There’s nothing there except open fields, as well as wooded areas, all part of this 80-acre parcel. So it’s called a farm but, frankly, there’s no structure of any kind, if you will.”
Cooper said the pigs, which can weigh as much as 800 pounds, cause as much damage as a rototiller.
“They haven’t been contained, and they’ve been finding their way to people’s backyards and right through the woods,” he said. “And they tore up someone’s backyard, I guess it was probably last summer, to a point where it was literally destroyed. I mean, he had an estimate of about $25,000 to repair the damage.”
According to the lawsuit, Michael Grenier of Pine Hill Road counted as many as 22 pigs on his lawn at one time and received estimates as high as $28,000 to repair his property.
Paul Tetrault, who lives half a mile up the road, has a vegetable farm and owns cows. He has had his vegetables consumed and his hay bales ruined, allegedly by the defendants’ cows that came onto his property more than 100 times, according to the lawsuit. The other defendants had similar stories.
“The Defendants’ pigs have dug and rooted the Plaintiffs’ and other neighbors’ lawns, ate their gardens and flower beds, and in some cases aggressively pursued their owners,” the lawsuit states.
Attorney Matthew-Alan Herman of Putnam, who is representing the plaintiffs, did not respond to a request for comment. Thomas Blatchley of Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani of Glastonbury, who is representing the defendants, also did not respond.
Cooper said he had not heard of pig sightings during the winter, but he expects they’ll return. “I was talking to someone from the (state) Department of Agriculture a while back and they said they’ve lost them. They can’t figure out where they’ve gone,” he said.
The Agriculture Department set up trail cameras as part of an investigation, according to the lawsuit.
However, Cooper believes they’ll be back.
“I dare say they’re still there. It’s just that up until recently, the weather has been miserable,” Cooper said. “I have a feeling now that the grass is beginning to green up and the fields’ beginning to take on a whole different color, I think the pigs will be back. That’s just my guess, because they really haven’t gone anywhere. They’ve kind of hunkered down, if you will, for the winter.”
State Sen. Heather Somers, R-Mystic, who represents Sterling and is a proponent of the legislative bill, said the Agriculture Department may not have seen pigs on their cameras lately, “but pigs are smart and they move around, and just because they don’t pass your trail cam does not mean they’re not there.”
“So now you’re starting to see them more and (during) a week that we were told, ‘Oh, they’re not there, everything’s good,’ somebody sent me a picture of this big huge hog on the side of the road. … So it is an issue, continues to be,” she said.
Somers said the Salvases applied for a grant from the Agriculture Department for fencing but would not let the department onto the property to inspect so did not receive the grant.
Rebecca Eddy, spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture, said in an email, “This remains an open investigation and we have no further comment at this time.”
“Whatever fencing that there is is not keeping the animals on his property, and that is the big source of the problem,” Somers said. “So now in the past, we’ve had cows out and the pigs started getting out. It’s not clear if there is any recognition when the pigs get out because the farmer doesn’t actually live in the district. He lives in a different town.”
It would take more than a standard fence to rein in a pig, Cooper said.
“Pigs will root under a fence, they’ll dig under a fence and get out that way, if they think that literally the grass is greener, so containing them is a totally different ballgame than containing a cow,” he said. “And that wasn’t done very well. The fencing was inadequate to say the least.”
He said he’s seen the pigs three-quarters of a mile from the farm. The homes on Pine Hill Road are separated by woods from the farm on Newport Road.
“So all they’ve got to do is go through the woods and here they are. ‘Hello, I’m in your backyard.’ And it’s happened, believe me, again and again and again,” Cooper said.
According to the lawsuit, the Northeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, which serves as the animal control service for the region, has issued citations for the farm as far back as 2017, when the farm was in Canterbury.
Since 2021, when the Salvases moved the farm to Newport Road, the issue has heated up. Tetrault twice has called the state police, who issued an infraction for creating a public disturbance, according to the lawsuit. NECCOG has been involved numerous times, it states.
The lawsuit cites 64 infractions against Ryan Salvas listed on the Judicial Branch website between April 19 and Nov. 7, 2023. It states the Agriculture Department classifies the pigs as “borderline feral animals.”
The lawsuit alleges the Salvases claim they are the victims and claim that neighbors are letting their animals off their property.
Jennifer Hutchins, animal control program coordinator for NECCOG, said, “Anytime the livestock is roaming, tickets are issued. It’s a consistent problem. And so usually, if it’s the first time they get out, we usually work with people, tell them they have to fix their fencing or try to resolve how they’re getting out. And if it continues, then they usually will be issued a ticket.”
The fine is $92 per citation. “We’ve issued multiple tickets to Mr. Salvas,” she said.
“They’re not really equipped to handle this kind of a situation but they have issued lots and lots of citations for a variety of reasons to this owner, animal owner, and from my understanding, precious few of them have ever made it to a court,” said Cooper about NECCOG’s enforcement.
“Even if it’s 100, I don’t care how many, the point is precious few have made it to court,” he said. “Now there’s a logjam there somewhere that needs to get cleaned up. And to me, that should be a high priority of that task force, because you could write all the rules you want, but if you can’t enforce them, it doesn’t amount to anything.”
Somers said the problem may be about to get a lot worse.
“Now we have baby pigs being seen in Canterbury, which is a town near Sterling, like piglets on the road. So they’re there in the wild,” she said. The lawsuit also states that the pigs have given birth to “several piglets, who also roam the woods and homes of the Plaintiffs uncontrolled.”
A meeting was going to be held with the interested parties to discuss the issue. “Frankly, the issue can’t wait for a task force,” Somers said. “We’re going to have more and more litters of pigs being born in the wild that are now feral and they destroy everything. They eat everything and they destroy everything.”
Pigs have three litters a year and can have between eight and 11 piglets in a litter. “Even if you had five feral pigs and we have more than five feral pigs out there reproducing, before you know it, it’s hundreds of pigs,” Somers said.
Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com.
