If you have been following me on Instagram this summer, then you already know we decided to completely overhaul and expand our existing farrowing barn. We knocked down the right wall, doubled the sized, busted out and re-poured a new concrete slab, hard wired electric, put on a metal roof, and completely redid the fencing and configuration of the paddock. It was a bit of a project, but it is officially complete and it feels great to have such an awesome set up in place.
If you follow closely, yes this farrowing barn is now our third revision. Our first set up we used when we had zero experience whatsoever. Some things worked, most things didn’t. Enter our second set up, based on things learned from the first. We tossed out the dog kennel creep and went with the “pitched roof” style, and increased the size. It worked well for us, but there were some functionality aspects that could be improved. Plus, it was only big enough to accommodate one sow. Because we have retained several gilts for breeding to increase our operation size, we needed something bigger. Hence the doubled in size farrowing barn.
Below is a video tour where I walk you through the setup. At least as much as I could in the 15 minutes allotted to me by Youtube. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read the previous posts that I wrote on each version. We didn’t start out with this set up, it took a few years of trial and error, and failure. While it may not be perfect, based on our previous experience we think it’s quite fitting for our needs.
We are extremely excited about this new farrowing barn set up and all of the piglets that will be born here in the coming years!
Happy Farrowing,
