The Rural Voice, 1993-07, Page 27Stewart's pigs enjoy the sunshine of
a late spring day near the open end
of their shelter.
several more years before it needs
replacement, despite the pounding it
takes from the winds whipping up off
Lake Huron. The tarps are advertised
to last five to seven years if they're
kept properly tied down.
Another saving is on electricity,
both the monthly bill and the initial
wiring costs. By using the energy -
free water bowl, the only electricity
in the shelter is for the flex -auger
system and three light bulbs. How
little use the lights get can be shown
by the fact they haven't been changed
in four years, Stewart
says.
Yeh, well saving
money is all well and
good, a skeptic might
say, but how do the
pigs do raised in such
primitive conditions?
Very well, Stewart
says. The shelters are
situated with the ends
to the east and west
which means there is plenty of fresh
air. The pigs are a lot healthier than
in the other barns in the operation
where, despite the fans, there always
seem to be stale air pockets, he said.
The air is cleaner, with less dust, and
there's less dampness than in
enclosed barns. When the
temperature fluctuates there are
health problems in the other barns but
not in the shelter. The hardiness of
the pigs is built up in the shelters, he
says.
But what about the weather? Can
the pigs survive in the cold? In the
winter Stewart puts a deep bed of
straw on the floor of the pens. The
pigs bury themselves in the deep
straw overnight. He remembers with
a smile one morning in his first
winter when he came to the shelter
and wondered if the pigs had run
away because none was in sight.
Then he saw the straw
move and realized the
pigs had buried
themselves under the
straw. "It's the way my
dad raised pigs 40 years
ago," he says.
In the winter he
stores eight large straw
bales inside, enough
straw for a batch of pigs,
so he doesn't have to
The air is
cleaner, and
fresher and
disease is
less in
outdoors
open the tarpaulin at the
ends of the shelter. He piles bales
three -high along the ends of the
building to break the wind in the
winter.
In winter he provides a high-
energy straight -barley ration to help
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JULY 1993 23