Is there a way to get pigs, other than using carrots?

I can't find a village, and I'm scared if I go too far I will lose my house and everything else inside. The only animal I'm missing in my barn is the pigs.

Also, is it true that if you go too far away, your buildings (or anything you place down) will disappear?

Solution 1:

I don't know about Pocket Edition, but definitely not in other versions of Minecraft. I've never lost my house by travelling too far away. There's an easy way to go a fair distance without losing your house, provided you have the draw distance on High:

Obtain a ton of dirt (~100 blocks), and build a tower straight up by jumping and placing a block underneath you. Do this until you're super high, then jump off, die, collect your stuff, and explore. You should be able to see the tower from a significant distance away.

Solution 2:

In MCPE on iPad (v 0.14), I've ventured for three or four days by a foot in a given direction, staying overnight at columns of dirt waiting out the night. Returned, and as expected nothing was destroyed.

Regarding how to get pigs, I'm not sure what your issue is whether it is to locate pigs or to get carrots to lure the pigs back home. In my worlds the pigs are rather easily found, and the carrots not so easy.

However I recently found a mob spawner during one of my mining expeditions, and after killing a bunch of mobs (standing behind a safety wall) one of the zombies dropped a carrot.

In other words, instead of actually locating a village with carrots, you can kill enough zombies to get a carrot, which you can then farm into as many carrots as you want. And according to MinecraftPocketEdition page on Pigs, these are your options related to attracting pigs and finding carrots.