ot Hog raisen

I want to build a new building to finish out a few hogs. Maybe two pens with 12-15 head in each.(why??) I really miss having hogs here. I love having pigs on pasture. The land here is flat n heavy so two, three days of rain and you have got a mess. I also really hate chasing hogs when they get out. I am thinking about a small 12-16 foot wide building 20 or so feet long. Slated floor. This would set on top of bunker silo blocks high enough for a skid steer to go under to clean out. Cement floor sloping away from the building. Dirt piled up outside along the walls like a old fashioned hip roof barn. Trap door in the roof or side so I can pull up with a feed grinder and fill round feeders. Walls that slide open in warm weather, or hinge up. I have two questions for any old hog men out there. How much poo/bu. does a growing hog eating free choice feed deliver out his back side 40 lbs. to finish on average? Next question, How heavy is H2S gas?? will it rise into the hog barn, or will it be heavy enough to drift out the open end of the basement pit?? I am trying to build something very simple, but yet will work. I would like to use a old fashioned Hog Haven structure, but they are impossible to find used and to expensive new to ever pay for themselves. Am I crazy or is there a simpler way to finish a few hogs, have some fun and not have them in the road?? Al

Some people use portable slat-floored buildings. Small, and easy to tow to a new spot when the manure piles up.

I raised a lot of hogs on portable slat floor buildings. 10 x 20 foot sections. All slat floored. One half with a building over it with drop doors for air and you could close them in winter. I built them. You would lay out three 3x12 rails stood up on edge. Then take oak 2x4x10 boards and nail across the rails. Space them 3/8s apart if green and 1/2 if season lumber. Bolt 4 foot 4x4s to one side and ends for the fence part. Nail rails long ways on the 4x4s. On one build the floor the same. Put six foot 4x4s on one side and four foot ones on the other. Build a slant rafter roof on this half. Steel roofing and inch pine siding. Two four foot wide windows on the front that hinge out at the top that you could prop open in the winter. A four foot wide door in the middle for the hogs to go in and out. On the out side wall two four foot wide doors that hinged up for ventilation in the summer.

You would put an open section and one roofed section together to make a 20x20 foot square pen. Set the 3x12 runners up on a few 8 inch concrete blocks. You could finish 35-40 hogs on one set of slats. Use gravity waterers and round hog feeders. I had twenty sets of buildings in 1980. They cost me around $1500 a set then using rough sawed lumber.

You had enough room under the slat floors to finish one group of hogs. Then just pull the sled/sheds forward and then use a loader to load the manure. On two farms I had some old concrete granary floors to set them on. That made the clean up a little easier.

Nice thing is they could be hauled anywhere in sections. I got out of hogs in 1987 and sold all the buildings for $2500 a set.

You could do some thing like that today with the concrete slats they make and those would not rot over time. I would get 8-10 years and would have to replace the floor boards in mine.

Get a hold of your states land grant Ag College and see if they can get you in touch of either their folks, or another ag college that has setups figured out for developing countries where they have to use non modern, non BTO commercial techniques. They may have plans already to go.