Outdoor Pig pictures

[andybob]

Sow housing.



Sow housing.



Farrowing hut.



Farrowing hut with piglets ready for processing.



Central hub.



Central hub with sows for sorting.

[Soapweed]

Pretty pudgy in pink, wink.

Stock tenders use cow dogs and sheep dogs. Do you ever use pig dogs to help move your stock?

[Jinglebob]

Now that there, boys and girls, is a passel of pigs!

Or perhaps a haggle of hogs?

Or simpley swine.

Thanks for postin' these pig pictures, andybob.

[andybob]

Been struggling for some time to scan some pictures of the outdoor pigs for a while, have some seasonal help now
This herd was 1000 sows at 10 to the acre, the sow barn huts take 20 adult sows, and dismantle for moving in 15 mins, the 'tent' type house 24 adults and take 30 mins to dismantle.
They were moved onto ryegrass mix underplanted to barley as soon as the barley is harvested, corn is grown on the field after the pigs are moved.
Soapweed, one of my sheep trained boarder collies, Skip, was an exelent 'pig dog' a big help as only two fulltime workers, with two students on the weekends, ran the whole unit.

[nr]

[andybob]

The field is well fertilised with the pig manure and straw from the deep litter in the huts which when spread, provides the potash to grow an exelent silage crop for the dairy, the soils are poor and stony, and need regular breaks under livestock to keep the structure maintained for the cropping, rotation.

[nr]

[Jinglebob]

I saw a story some years back about being self sufficient on a small farm. One of their ideas was to have a portable pen, say 16 ft by 16 ft, that you kept pigs in. Then you moved it every day while throwing seeds on the ground. This way the pigs would "farm" the ground and you would rotate them thru' a place. Sounded like a good idea, but I never had much luck with pigs. I got one for a graduation present and to my knowledge, I am the only person in the world who got a free pig and lost money on the deal.

To this day, I don't care much for pork.

[Northern Rancher]

Are those Yorkshire cross sows? when I was first married we ran quite a few hogs-now when Ty manages to sneak one by his Mom we get the odd sow in the spring. Farrow them out then before it gets too cold sell the pigs off and butcher the dry sow to make deer sausage with. When they used to thresh in this country alot of hogs were raised in the straw piles-those old sows were pretty self sufficient. I kind of like hogs to be honest-but I like anything with four legs that gets in the neighbors garden lol-jkin'.Those are pretty healthy happy looking porkers for sure-beats what you see in the hothouses.

[nr]

[Northern Rancher]

Contrary to popular belief bears aren't that bad to be around-I suppose they'd kill a pig if they were hard pressed but most would rather eat berries from what I've seen. In the spring they graze in the meadows just like cattle-trying to get their stomachs back in order after hibernating. If a guy went a big scalepasture hog deal like that I'd run some Pyreness dogs with them to keep the yotes out. Mind you any electric fence that can keep pigs in would keep any predators we have out. Back in the day that home grown pork supplemented with skim milk was yummy stuff. I don't really miss milking cows that much though.

[Oldtimer]

Used to be several guys around here 40-50 years ago that "ran" hogs...Some were out on the Missouri-- One of our neighbors on the river was one that had over 1000 hogs at times...Let them run up the creek and on his grain fields in the summer and fall...Whenever he got a little short on money or had a note come do, he'd call me up to hire me to help him round up some....Take horses and dogs up the creek and start gathering up hogs out of the creekbottom and the brush...

And the dogs work good on them- he had two collies and I had a couple of heelers and you'd send those dogs into the creek bottom and the brush and have hogs of all sizes coming out of everywhere-- definitely not a place to ride a colt, as I had a couple of old broke horses even blow up on me when those hogs started coming out between their legs and everywhere...