Monday, February 27, 2012

Hordes of piglets

Every spring I wonder if I have too many piglets, and then I get a call asking for 15 or 20 at a time, and I then immediately switch to wondering if I have too few piglets. 
 It doesn't look like it, but there's 80 pigs in this pen. 


 This is a trough that we use when feeding vegetables or fruit to the little guys.  It's a recycled culvert; scavenged from a road construction project, cut in half, and with a frame built around it.  It's easy to clean, sturdy, and best of all, cheap. 
 At this time of year, since we still have frosts and cold, we use bowls for their water.  In the warmer seasons I much prefer automatic waterers, but if the supply hose freezes the pigs are out of water.  So we go old school, with bowls. 
 for 80 pigs we use two two-door feeders.  These feeders have seen many years of use, and while they are more than I'd like to pay, they do save time and feed.  each one holds about 200lbs of feed, which means feeding the little pigs is a once-every-10-days chore.  Anything I can do to reduce labor is good. 
The domes are calf-domes, with 6" of wood chips and a couple of flakes of hay on top of it.  The pigs like to burrow into the wood chips and cover themselves with a blanket of hay and seem happiest that way, so we make sure to provide all of the ingredients for a warm pig bed. 

1 comment:

becky3086 said...

That is definitely a LOT of pigs! I like your pig houses. I have been using hay in my pigs house but maybe I will get some wood chips too.