Winter Shoats on Hay
Did you know that at a certain stage young pigs are called shoats? This is after they’re weaners and before they’re growers. Check out the FAQ page for more fun pig terms and trivia.
Outdoors: 24°F/-2°F Partially Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 65°F/59°F
Daily Spark: Sometimes I hear someone claim that something is impossible even though other people are doing it. What I really hear them saying is they don’t know how, that they have failed. Then the question is, why don’t they ask for help…
Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.
There’s some heat and warm temps in that hog lot (what we would have called it in southern Iowa). There’s snow all around, outside their domain!
The lack of snow on the bedding is due to the heat rising up from the composting bedding pack and the foot movement of the pigs.
Walter,
Can you tell me a bit more about your winter feeding routine? Do you put out fresh feed each day on top of your wood chip piles? I am building up wood chip and hay beds, but am uncertain about how much hay to put out all at once, especially when it stands the chance of being snowed on. I am feeding alfalfa hay and spent brewer’s barley. Pigs will be back on pasture when the snows melt.
I look forward to your response. Thanks so much for being such a fantastic resource!!
We put out hay pretty much every day but not necessarily to every group. In the winter our herds are divided up into a number of different groups of pigs with automatic sorting creeps and hurdles[1, 2] by sizes in addition to the boar territory sorting and separation of farrowing sows from the rest of the herds. One of the keys is having winter paddocks be large enough so that pigs have room to move around. Then those areas become gardens in the warm months for growing food for the livestock for the following cold season.
Whatever you call them at any stage,,,,sounds delicious