Filling the barn

When I said deep litter, I meant deep.  Here's an idea of the scale of the litter.  The concrete blocks you can see in the background are 2' tall, so the liter is about 2.5' deep.   There's still a good 3 to 4 feet above the litter so that the pigs can't get to the roof. 

To fill the barn consumed quite a bit of material; around 180 cubic yards of wood chips.  That's 18 dump truck loads (full-sized dump trucks).  That's quite a bit.  This bedding will remain in the barn for the next 8 to 10 months, and it'll absorb all of the manure and pee from the pigs. 

To maintain it the theory is that you run a rototiller across the top about once a month, and if it gets too wet you add more bedding.  I have lots of bedding material, so that's not a problem.  As we loaded these chips in they're actually steaming -- generating quite a bit of heat from naturally composting.