Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Tinker toy barn

 We're having the functional tests of the barn, but it occurred to me that this was a little like a barn construction set.  With the slab underneath, you can move the blocks around to reconfigure the barn in a few minutes.  The picture above is the feeding area; it's 9' wide and 30' long, which is enough space for an entire trailer load of produce at a time. 
 The produce comes in looking pretty good; in this particular load we got some potted plants, which the pigs sometimes will eat, other times they'll ignore the plant, but mix the potting soil into the load as they eat the fruit and vegetables.  Makes for better compost.  If there's no potted plants we will add a scoop of wood chips to help soak up the excess liquid. 
 Here's the first customer.  There's a saying you don't want to eat in an empty restaurant -- I think pigs would prefer that. 
Here's the feeding in full swing.  Notice the goat standing on top of the pile.  He likes romaine lettuce. 

Generally speaking, this appears to be enough space for the pigs to get in and eat the produce.  It's sized so that a single tractor scoop will clean the area.  I think I need an apron on the outside, though.  It's tough to get the trailer right up to the opening.  with a concrete apron we'd dump there, and then push it into the feeding area. 

This is the first time that I've been able to see clearly how much volume the pigs eat.  When they got done with this batch it was down in volume by at least 75%.  I'll let them root through it tonight and see what it looks like in the morning. 

1 comment:

CS said...

How has your cost to produce a slaughter weight pig changed with the available produce?