Following a recent letter (Review April 4, Mr Horsfield) requesting mathematical figures to work out how many boar there are going to be in the future, I have decided to do just that with a simple formula.

I used a formula which assumes that sows have on average five piglets per year (sourced from various 'boar' websites) 50 per cent of which are sows and that piglets are able to breed after an average of 12 months (also sourced from 'boar' websites).

It goes like this: z = number of pigs and y = number of piglets: I am using y = 5. ((z /2) times y) + z. (Note that this does not include any fatalities, etc.).

I inserted the formula into Microsoft Excel – like this if you want to try: =SUM((A1/2)*5) +A1 and extrapolate it down twelve cells to represent the years 2014-2025.

It showed, if we started with 100 (50/50 gender difference) boar this year (as claimed by 'boar activists') by the year 2025, we would have 96,549,157 boar.

However to make this hurt even more, I inserted what the Forestry Commission aerial thermal imaging survey said is the current number of pigs, which is 565, and by 2025 apparently we would have 545,502,739 (yes, that is over half a billion!) boar, roaming our Forest. There ya go!

– A 15-year-old Forester, Blakeney.