Pigpen location

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I am trying to plan the best place to put our pigpen/yard, and I was hoping some of you experienced hog raisers could give an opinion. We have a choice of two sites. One is east of, but kind of uphill from, our house. Not within sight because of forest. The prevailing winds in our area are from the south/SW. Water (in this very rainy county) seems to drain through our property from a good 15 acres to the east of us. Our house itself is on a rise so there is no danger of runoff actually getting to the house. The other site is to the south of the housesite, in the clearing, but shaded by tall conifers, and well below us in elevation (maybe 8 feet). This is within sight of the house, about 100 ft away--better for our amusement and predator defense (coyotes). It is within 50ft of the well, but the well is 327 ft deep, so I don't think it will taint the water. The wellhouse is higher in elevation,too. Site #1 is further from the house, so not so convenient for doing the chores, but site #2 is downwind. What do you think?

-- snoozy (bunny@northsound.net), December 02, 2001

Answers

Go east snoozy go east. Our winds are out of the south in s.e. Kansas in the summer and our pig pin is n.e. and the smell dose not reach our house. Pigs stink year round. Jim

-- Pastor Jim Raymond (greaternewlifech@terraworld.net), December 02, 2001.

Our friends raise thousands of pigs and we were over there for a bbq one night and got to making up a poem. Their pigs were particularly smelly that evening and we got tickled about it!.....pigs in the east, they smell the least.... Pigs in the south, breath out your mouth...Pigs in the west, they smell the best.......

Sorry, can't figure one out for North...Just thought that this was funny. We laughed anyway! heehee! :~) ! Judging by theirs I would say downwind too unless you only have a couple and a large area to keep them in.

-- Nan (davidl41@ipa.net), December 02, 2001.


You don,t ever want pigs no matter how many were the wind will blow from them to you. They stink worse than any live stock. Don't put them that close to your well either. If there happens to be a fissure and there always is even in solid rock the ground water could get into your well water. Depth has some advantage but water always goes down and could easly get into your water. Check with your health dept about recommended distance. You are paying them with your taxes and you sure don't want to make you or your family sick. We have had real problems around here with the huge hog farms and the pollution they caused to the ground water and the smell. The last two court cases the hog farms lost and had to close because of the damage they did to the surround ing farms. The damage is done and the surrounding people will never be able to safely use their wells and the company had to run city water to them but the farmers have to pay for the water they use.

-- david (bluewaterfarm@mindspring.com), December 02, 2001.

Our friends have regular checks by the epa and other organizations to see if they are doing everything properly. They are not like us poor folks....they have lots and lots of land to disperse the pig stuff over. People actually pay to have it spread on their property. Not me! I'll take dry chicken poo over liquid pig poo anyday! And you are right, it can get into your well. Our friend's well is fine, but it is about 400 acres away from the barns. They are on one side of the section and the pigs are on the other surrounded by lots of forrested acres.

-- Nan (davidl41@ipa.net), December 02, 2001.

Snoozy, I vote for the east as long as it isn't directly uphill from your house. You can always check with your friendly and helpful county extension agent, they get paid to give advice. You don't want even one pig too close to your well. I try to raise a feeder pig in the fall and winter when the wind is out of the north and it blows the smell out of town instead of into town. I have not had any complaints so far. I live on the south edge of a very very small town, and want to get along with everyone.

-- Karen in Kansas (kansasgoats@iwon.com), December 02, 2001.


snoozy,

I'd go with the location that is farther from your well. I don't understand why several posters have mentioned how badly pigs stink. My experience is that when you raise pigs in a pen that is large enough, the smell isn't bothersome at all. I've found that if the pigs are in a large enough pen, any odor problem is usually related to spilled feed being ground into the dirt. What actually stinks is the rotting feed. I solved this problem in my pigpen by giving the pigs a large food bucket. I use a cut-off plastic barrel (that never contained anything toxic) with sides about 8-10 inches high. I also only feed the pigs what they will clean up right away. That way, food doesn't get spilled when they get full and deciede to play by tipping over the feed bucket. Since switching to the cut-off barrel, the only times I've had any odor problem at all is when we get extended periods of really rainy weather when the ground is waterlogged. Hope this helps.

-- Murray in ME (lkdmfarm@megalink.net), December 03, 2001.


I realize I only have one hog, so when I tell you there's no odors, you may not be surprised. But the hog ranch down the road also doesn't smell. Manure is cleaned up often, but I'm convinced it's the way we feed. No junk from the house; only the feed that is formulated for them is fed.

-- ~Rogo (rogo2020@yahoo.com), December 03, 2001.

Pig manure will smell, and pig urine will smell, and the two together will smell worse, and pigs like to root, and if you have them on dirt permanenty in one area everything will get widely distributed and spread all through the soil, and the pigs will root big holes in the ground, and the holes will capture rainwater, and it will become a foetid quagmire, and you will not be able to clean it up, and it will STINK. If you have pigs in a concrete-floored pen you can control most of the smell there, with a little regular cleaning. If you are going to let them out of the pens then you need to rotate the areas they are using to let the areas recover before they are overwhelmed by the droppings, or turned into a moonscape by the pigs rooting. If you intend to make use of the pigs rooting as a plough or some such, and have the pigs fertilise the soil as well, then it's gunna STINK - no help for it. These are not areas you want upwind of you at any stage, and they are not areas you want near water supply for yourself or your stock.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), December 03, 2001.

I realize that I wrote that site #2 was downwind, but I meant upwind, but you all figured that out anyway. We are only thinking of finishing off a pair of feeder pigs at time, not raising up a political party (isn't that the collective noun for a bunch of pigs...?) You all agree with my husband, he is happy to note, so I guess when we get there, site #1 it shall be. Thank you for your advice!

-- snoozy (bunny@northsound.net), December 03, 2001.

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