About 400 piglets were scurrying about the Trans-Canada Highway after a semi-trailer hauling them crashed and broke open, approximately 100 kilometres east of Regina.

The truck driver who was hauling 2,500 piglets swerved to avoid a moose and crashed the truck, allowing about 400 of the little pink porkers to get loose on Monday night around 10:45 CT.

It was pretty well chaos. - Dwayne Stone

"We've been to overturned cattle haulers, but never piglets," said Grenfell fire Chief Dwayne Stone, adding this was a first for him in 30 years of being in Grenfell.

"They were all in the ditch and running on the highway when we got there. Our guys used the back boards out the trucks to make a V and herd them off the road," he said. "They'd break off in groups of five or so, which made it tricky."

Stone likened the endeavour to the popular saying "it's like herding cats." He said some of the piglets were tired but "some put up a little fight."

"It was pretty well chaos," he told CBC News Tuesday afternoon. "We quickly started to contain piglets that were taking off into the ditch and onto the highway and tried to bring them back towards the semi on the ditch side just to get them out harm's way."

Stone said not all of the pigs made it — "some of them got smothered inside" the truck, he said.

Along with a fire crew and RCMP members, area farmers with livestock trailers came to help round up the two-week-old piglets. It took more than two hours to finish gathering them, Stone said.

Some of the piglets were struck on the highway.

The driver of the semi-trailer sustained minor injures and was treated on scene by EMS from the town of Moosomin.

By 8 a.m. Tuesday morning, traffic had returned to normal on the highway.