4 ms·
It depends on how intensive the setup is. My grandparents had about 3 pigs, 2 cows and one horse in a common animal yard, covered in large, raised river stone,
by raducu 5y ago
It depends on how intensive the setup is.
My grandparents had about 3 pigs, 2 cows and one horse in a common animal yard, covered in large, raised river stone, and a yard within the yard just for the pigs. The pigs also had a separate stable room for sleeping (really dirty indeed) and the cows and horse would sleep together in the same stable room (even though they had available individual rooms, I guess the horse didn't like to sleep alone).
I think they cleaned the pig yard every couple of weeks; they had to clean the stables every few days and the common animal yard once per season.
It was common in older days that pigs were raised in communal mountain herds, they were semi-wild, foraging in the woods, mostly on beech nuts, but they would return in the evening at a common stable/den.
Anyway, cleaning wasn't the hardest part, imho, but bringing water and hay/food for the larger animals was, especially in bad weather.
I find it astonishing how little "foreign" food the pigs required. It was scraps from us and special nutritious weeds from vegetable gardens.
In later years people started intensively feeding the pigs and they do get higher yields/less work.
- steve_adams_86 5y agoAhh yes, carrying food out for pigs was always a work out. Their pen was only 50 meters or so from our house, but the buckets of scraps and feed felt like they were 200 pounds as a kid. And there were several of them. Haha, all good memories. Pigs get so excited when the food shows up.
- igetspam 5y agoMy pigs do a decent job of mowing parts of the back acreage. They prefer to hang near the house for shade (still need to finish building the stalls in th barn). We give them pig feed and fresh fruits/vegetables but they're purpose built eaters, so they just graze and graze. Keeping them warm in the TX freeze last year took aot of work but that was a freak incident (for now). Access to fresh water (dog pools) and lots of grassy acreage means they can pretty well take care of themselves.