Kia Ora, greetings from New Zealand. Arrived here via Justin, great ideas and set up, like your simple practical attitude and your stockmanship, placid , trusting sows make for easy handling and stress free piglets. We have just bought 5 Berkshire/Large black sows and the grandson is gonna love this Channel . Should be breeding them mid winter for a]n early summer late spring farrow. Will be following you with interest, hope that ya have a great spring and summer. Regards Gary Jackson.
Great design of the hutches. I have used the A frame style similar to the pictures you showed but mine are larger and have 3 sides enclosed with a tin roof, great job. Keep up the good work.
Hi there, did you guys manage to draw up some plans for these shelters? I have looked at a lot of examples and actually think yours makes the most sense. Love your channel :)
I'd really like to see the set up and breakdown of one of your shelters to get a better idea of how they are constructed and where the pivot points are. :)
I've been looking for a house when rotating my pig on pasture that they won't keep taring up every year. Yours look like they will hold up well. Going to have to give it a try. Thank you!
Love the vids. I'm a finance guy and would love the hear some about the actual money. ie: Cost to rent equip, labor, materials and fence crew. Rev from lumber to offset costs - totals, and how many feet, etc. I work in feature film finance and am a little obsessed with farming. Love what you do. Keep it going.
Hello Jordan. Regarding cold-hardiness, there is the Mangalica breed originating in Hungary that has woolly hairs. The article in Wikipedia shows some interesting pictures. The sows are not very prolific but the meat is tops.
Do you have any books out yet on any of the things you have do so far? I really enjoy all of your videos and, have learned a lot from you. Thank you Jordan, and thanks to who ever is filming!
@@FarmBuilder A good idea would be pamphlets. Put out a 20-30 page pamphlet on a single subject that goes into details, budgets, designs, etc. Shouldn't take more than a weekend to write on e-format and .pdf or e-publish on Amazon for $1-$3 a copy. This should give you a fairly good idea what sells and what doesn't without a huge upfront resource investment. After you publish a few, you will be able to tell what sells and what doesn't and if it is cost effective.
I really enjoy watching your vlogs and I would love it there was any way you could make a build or material list for these shelters because I have 15 sows that will be leaving the barn lot and we will be moving them into the woods
Hey Jordan! I'm wondering if you got around to making a video or plans for the portable farrowing hut. I would pay for them! I'm fairly handy, but the materials list would be great for me to present costs to my business partner. Any info you can give would be great!
How do you monitor each litter of pigs? Yes a visual will let you know the litter size at birth but with free range pigs of 10 sows they will be all over the place soon after birth. Is their some sort of tagging in place that identifies each litter belonging to each sow? If not how do you track the quality of pigs produced from individual sows over a series of litters? How do you track the genetics of sows through generations? Congrats on the quality of your herd. The pigs are in brilliant condition and very quiet, calm and easy to work.
This is my query too. Big groups of piglets all running free...how does he know which litter? Perhaps he tags them at weening. Also, when does he castrate the males?
where we live it can get down to -30C (-22F) at times. This winters farrowing hit -31C. Normal farrowing temps that time of year for us is about -10C (14F). Would you still recommend farrowing at these low of temp? We do have a barn and have used it for farrowing with heat lamps. Works ok. Just wondering your thoughts
This sounds like a great permaculture tool for the larger and medium farm setups. Where are you with this? I have some technical drawing training and can help with bill of materials, layout, etc. We can use the tools on Google Drive to collaborate and publish the results of this project (for free, my price point). Let me know.
My name is Jordan. Our foundational breeds were duroc, yorkshire and Hampshire. We now have a cross of those breeds selected for phenotype and other characteristics.
Have you experienced sows grabbing, killing and eating new born piglets from the farrowing sows? It seems to become epidemic once it starts. These sows only attack new born pigs. Nice farrowing shelter, Do you have plans?
+Kile Covell It's something that can happen and IMO there are a couple of factors. 1. Sow has a taste for piglet and eats others or her own. In my experience the only solution to this is culling. 2. underfed sow. A close to farrowing so through weaning should be getting 15 lbs a feed a day plus pasture or hay. If she is hungry for to long she'll look around for something to eat. Make sure its high energy feed too, I feed lactating sows half and half a 14% ration and peanuts. 3. close proximity. When several sows are stacked up in the same place the elevated stress can be expressed through cannibalism. What I mean by close proximity is a confined space. Often sows will farrow in the same general area on pasture but they have the larger area to stretch their legs and graze. We've had some issues in the past but aggressive culling, proper feeding and space as all but eliminated the problem. Thanks for the hat tip on the shelters. I don't have drawn plans right now for them. I tend to design something in my mind and go with it. I'm hoping to get a design buddy to pencil it for me.
Kelly SMith - have you roughed anything out? It seems like a good design, but I need some specifics to build one. Thank you! and Thank you to Farm Builder for what looks like a great design.
Is there anywhere I can find more detailed breakdown of measurements? I gathered it's 36" across top down to 12" in back, is the front 48" high? What is the depth?
Do you grow feed and make your own or buy bulk hog feed ? What do u feed your pigs ? How many head of pigs do u have or try to have at any given time ? Do you have a store or go to market how do u sell your hogs ?
Help me understand your methods. Why do you not put your sows in a barn to deliver and then for at least 4 weeks of protection from the cold? The cold temperatures especially requires pigs to consume much more feed to stay warm. The babies have NO FAT!!! HAVING HEAT LAMPS also keeps the babies away from their mother until they are ready to nurse from her. All of you followers of Joel Saliton are always focusing on the happiness of the livestock, but then having these sows and babies in the cold just does not fit in your focus on the desire to have the animals so happy.
Everyone has there idea of how to raise their animals, which I respect. From what I can observe and assume Farm Builder is selectively choosing and breeding his pigs to take care of themselves, feed themselves, fatten themselves, breed themselves, and farrow by themselves. The way livestock use to be until humans interfered with natural selection, which I'm not saying is wrong either, but I will say it has created bad genetics (bad bags, infertility, bad hooves/feet, and so on). I am assuming he chooses to bring back the independent instincts and genetics that livestock can obtain.
