A little farming

Well, between the government agencies, employee issues and lawsuits, I get to do a little farming. 

 This is the view from the end of the large greenhouse, doing its offseason job of providing livestock shelter.  I'm doing a deep-litter type approach here -- there's about a foot of fresh wood chips under the pigs.   There's one large feeder in with the pigs, and two outside the pen that we'll rotate in as its consumed. 

 (To see the greenhouse in the main use, click here.  )

  I run a panel across the greenhouse, and woven-wire fencing along the edges to keep the pigs off the plastic, and to keep any pigs that get out of the electric fence in the greenhouse. 

 These little guys are small enough that they can slip under the electric fence setup we have, but I don't worry about them too much.  They mostly snooze and hang around the extra feeders, and eventually will usually go back in with the main herd, but they're well-contained by the greenhouse and no bother to me, so I let them be. 

 Here's the view from the middle of the greenhouse back towards the feeders.  There's 75 or so pigs in this pen.  I've set it up this way so that there's an alley for the tractor all the way along one side; makes it easier to bring in new chips or supplies as needed.  Once the pigs have been on this side of the greenhouse for a while, I'll move the alley to the other size. 

 At this time of year we have to deal with the automatic waterers freezing, and we do that by switching to smaller bowls of water.  I don't use a trough here because of the varying sizes of pigs; the smaller ones have a hard time dealing with the height of the trough, but everyone can drink out of the bowls.  They'll turn the bowls over and wet the wood chips, and this is where I'll need to add more chips, I note. 

the space is big enough that the pigs can spread out and have some alone time, or cuddle up.  When they sleep like this I know that the bedding is warm enough that they don't feel the need to cuddle up; the wood chips compost and provide heat for the pigs, and the warmer and nicer the bedding, the less feed they consume to put on weight.  Plus I like to see lazy, contented pigs snoozing and grumbling and basically having a nice winter day together.