Farrowing house and pens.

Our new farrowing house is in use.  The reasoning for building it, as any of you who have followed this writing for a while know, is that pasture farrowing simply could not provide the flow of pigs we needed to provide the pork for our customers on a year around basis.  So when we began to plan the building, we resolved to make it mimic the pasture environment as well as we could.  Thus the ceilings are a full eight feet in height, rather than the conventional six and a half.  We have four large windows on the south side and two plus a window in the door on the east end.  During daylight hours the light is wonderful in the building.  The pens are roomy as you can see in the photos.  We were able to reuse some of the steel and plastic planking from purchases made at a shut down hog farm.  Our choice was for the plastic because like wood it is quieter than steel in a hog building, but unlike wood, it stands up well to chewing by the sows and it is easier to clean, always a consideration when livestock are kept inside. The effect is an inviting and quiet environment in which to do our work.  The sows are comfortable as well;  the first group to be moved in settled right down in their pens and soon farrowed their litters without a  hitch.

Note the diagonal guard rails in the front of the pen.  These were made from a farrowing crate with the top taken off and the sides spread out.  The pen is about six feet wide and eleven feet deep.  The sow has her drinking cup toward the back and a grate through which she might see and interact with the sow next to her.  Our hope is that she will establish a dunging and wet area back along that end gate as it has the gutter and cleaner just on the other side.  Then the center and front of the pen would be bedded for her comfort and the guard rails allow the piglets to be next to her without being in much danger of being overlain.  Part of the way in which this is meant to work is that the floor will be temperature controlled by zone which will help control the behavior and movement of the sow.

The floor slopes down one inch each three and one half feet of run toward the far end of the pen.  This is approximately a two percent slope, which is not steep by any means.  Time will tell if we will need to use a bedding board across the pen to retain the straw in the front of the pen, or if the sow will be able to do that herself.  We really will not know until we get the geothermal and heat up and running.  As you can see, the two sows in the picture are lying near the bottom of the pens with their litters.  We hope to discourage that.  More on this in the next post.