A Farrowing Shed for Pigs

5/28/07 - 2nd Day - Midday. Ok, so I have been working a bit about the ranch, and I wanted to share one of my projects with you. Here is my first attempt at a "farrowing shed" which is basically a piggy birthing center. It is a special housing shed in which the sow can have and keep her piglets. It is designed to aid her in feeding her litter without "overlay" which is a common event - when the sow lays down on some of her piglets and kills them. Without a farrowing shed, deaths by overlay can account for up to a 50% loss in piglets. I am building my farrowing shed from mostly reclaimed and used materials. I started with several large pallets. These are not the normal pallets, but are larger and were used for shipping water containers to a store in Coleman. Some of the ladies from the community got these for me for free. I started with three 6'5" X 6'5" pallets with the goal of building two of these farrowing sheds.


I broke down one of the pallets to use the boards to make the pallets "solid" so I can use them for the floors of the sheds. This was a much harder job than I first thought. First, the pallets are held together by twisty nails (half screw, half nail) and so pulling nails was a real chore. Second, the boards are nailed in kind of haphazardly, so the spacing between them is not uniform. This means in most cases I actually had to pull the boards on the "receiving" pallet as well, because the gaps were too big or too small. I also ended up custom cutting some of the boards to make them fit right.


I ended up with usable flooring pallets, and I screwed three 8' long landscape timbers (which are cheap, and often on sale for less than $2 each this time of year) to make a "skid". This will make the whole shed movable if it is necessary to move them.


I then began to frame up the shed using reclaimed lumber we salvaged from a neighbor who let us tear down an old house on his land. The rear of the shed is 4" high and the front is 5" high.


With the main framing finished, I began attaching 1 x 12 reclaimed boards (from the torn down building) as walls.


Here is the farrowing shed almost finished. I did use 3 pieces of thin plywood in the construction. 1 for the front (was running out of good used boards) and two for the roof. I also put in an old salvaged screen window to let the breeze in this summer when it will be very hot. I can cover this if the sow is farrowing in the winter, and I will probably put some old boards across the lower end to keep the piglets from tearing it up.


Here is the front view of the farrowing shed nearly finished.


In this pic you can see that I have added some rolled aluminum flashing as roofing (given to me by Logan Ante), and a catchwater system to catch water for the pigs.



Here you can see a view of the inside of the shed. There are two 2 x 6 boards attached a sloping angle to help the sow lay down while allowing the piglets to escape being overlayed and killed. After 96 hours, the piglets are big enough and fast enough to know that momma is about to lay down so get out of the way!


Here are two of the three pigs we currently are keeping on pasture. The one closest to the camera is Luella my sow. The other two sows we currently are keeping belong to others on the property. I will be keeping the Ante's sow during farrowing and up to weaning time. David will be picking up his sow this week when his farrowing shed is finished up on his land.


We sent our three boars to the butcher last week. I will relate to you the fantastical story of "The Battle of Butcher Holler" in my next post.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker