Today we took on a big project. In the corner of the property near the chicken coop has been a sizeable brush pile since we moved here. We always planned on burning it but never got around to doing it. Fortunately, there is a better use of this brush!
We decided to move it all into the pig pen to give them more of a pasture feel. There are no trees in the pig pen yet, so this will provide a little of whats missing. Slowly we want to do everything we can do to make this place more "natural".
the brush was piled up against the horse arena fencing in a long row. Hopefully this will provide some place to dig, perhaps small animals will move in for cover, etc. Only time will tell.
Additonally I connected a nozzle to a hose tied to the tposts, and installed a water timer. It is set to run fresh water a few minutes each day to keep a mud pond for the pigs. Having constant fresh water, but not too much, should keep this place fairly clean and desease free. It will take a while to get hte adjustment right. In the summer, this will be the hang out spot! (as you may know, pigs do not sweat, they must use water and/or mud applied to their bodies to keep cool and block the sun. Its a sort of sunscreen mudpack. This is probably why pigs have hte reputation of being "dirty", but they are actually very clean animals, they just have to use mud to block the heat and sun.)
Here are some pics of the water / mud hole. If you look closley you can se the nozzle tied to the top of hte center tpost.
Heres a pic in the daylight showing the water flow. We have dubbed this "Pig Springs"
No comments:
Post a Comment