Will my Pen Idea work?

[eviemethugh]

I am wanting to pasture raise our pigs, half on pasture, half under some tree coverage, right now I have the two of them (8 weeks old) in our 10x10x6 chicken tractor with an XL plastic dog kennel, and we move them daily. I am going to try to finish their new full size house and pen in the next two weeks. We bought berkshires from someone who also raised on pasture.
For the pen I was going to buy 8 hog panels (16 feet long each) of 4 gauge wire. And put them together with the Premiere brand panel hinges (they are big coils with stops on the top that twist two panel edges together) and carabiner clips. I imagine I will have to move them every week, even with that much space. We are going to cut a gate out of one of the panels, and use an extra hinge there.
We have foxes, stray dogs and coyotes for sure.
WITHOUT electric and metal posts, will this keep the pigs in? I know they dig, but it seems like as long as we keep moving them they don't dig out. Will they be able to lift these up or topple them over without the metal posts?
Finally, will this keep predators OUT? The panels we are getting are 5 feet tall. Should I lock them into a secure hog house at night? They would have to be in there 10-12 hours depending on when nightfall comes (the pigs don't wake up until after 8am right now!) In my head I am picturing an A frame with 2x4 welded wire in the pitch of the roof, and 2x4 boards with 4" of space in between as the "siding" with more wire to cover the gaps. I would put a hog water bowl in there connected to a 5 gallon gravity flow bucket. Am I overthinking this?

 

[Latestarter]

Greetings and welcome to BYH. Ummm I don't own hogs, but that sounds like a lot of work with a lot of chance for things to go sideways. Hogs get big, heavy and powerful, and to them, the grass (or acorns) are always better on the other side of the fence. Without fence support posts or electric, when they grow out, they might decide to break out. They will easily be able to push them (panels) over (or lift them with their snouts) even before they're full grown.

I'll tag a few folks who might be able to give better feedback/advice.

@Ferguson K @Pamela @misfitmorgan @Mini Horses @jk47 And there are quite a few others, but I can't remember them all. Good luck with your future pork chops, hams, bacon, yum...

 

[eviemethugh]

Thanks, latestarter! They will be located inside of an 8 acre pasture that has permanent posts with 3-4 strands of barbed wire, while in the moveable hog panels, but I really don't want my ribs and hams getting out and being scratched up by barbs! Ha!
And I can't imagine chasing them in that big of an area.

 

[misfitmorgan]

I am wanting to pasture raise our pigs, half on pasture, half under some tree coverage, right now I have the two of them (8 weeks old) in our 10x10x6 chicken tractor with an XL plastic dog kennel, and we move them daily. I am going to try to finish their new full size house and pen in the next two weeks. We bought berkshires from someone who also raised on pasture.
For the pen I was going to buy 8 hog panels (16 feet long each) of 4 gauge wire. And put them together with the Premiere brand panel hinges (they are big coils with stops on the top that twist two panel edges together) and carabiner clips. I imagine I will have to move them every week, even with that much space. We are going to cut a gate out of one of the panels, and use an extra hinge there.
We have foxes, stray dogs and coyotes for sure.
WITHOUT electric and metal posts, will this keep the pigs in? I know they dig, but it seems like as long as we keep moving them they don't dig out. Will they be able to lift these up or topple them over without the metal posts?
Finally, will this keep predators OUT? The panels we are getting are 5 feet tall. Should I lock them into a secure hog house at night? They would have to be in there 10-12 hours depending on when nightfall comes (the pigs don't wake up until after 8am right now!) In my head I am picturing an A frame with 2x4 welded wire in the pitch of the roof, and 2x4 boards with 4" of space in between as the "siding" with more wire to cover the gaps. I would put a hog water bowl in there connected to a 5 gallon gravity flow bucket. Am I overthinking this?

This would definitely not work for long. The first problem is going to be moving it...if your pigs are anything like ours first they associate "home" with a certain location and moving it messes them up a bit. Second when you move the pen i assume you will be picking it up somehow...pigs are pros at picking up and flipping things with their nose/mouth. Pigs are also very smart animals and once they see humans do things they will get certain ideas...not saying they are so smart they will think well the human can pick it up so i can too, its more they will see it moves so they will no longer see it as a boundry and move of it as a toy..to be played with. We have some roughly 5 month old gilts that have no problem at all picking up a 7 gallon water pan full of water, they have been doing this since they were about 4 months old. Pigs are very strong animals so i doubt they would have a hard time simply walking down the fence. They like to jump against things, standing up on their hind legs and leaning their weight on fences, walls, gates.

Also keep in mind that unless you socialize with your pigs A LOT they will have a flight response anytime you enter their pen which means they will come up to the fence to see if you have food and then as soon as you enter will race as fast as they can to the other end and try to keep going, your pen needs to be able to handle that. We teach our pigs that when we come to the pen we have treats SOMETIMES..a favorite is whole raw eggs in the shell...they love crushing them. This is not a added part of their diet simply a treat they like. We also hand feed our pigs treats...be careful if you plan to do this as the pigs need a sign of some sort that your hand is not food and "no i dont have a treat/food right now" our pigs know if they go to sniff our hand and we scratch their forehead we have no treat, they generally then go back to whatever they were doing....if they are persistant checking our hand more then once or twice we tap their nose and that is typically enough for them to get the message. Pigs have very sensitive noses so it is a "gentle" tap just enough for them to go "oh yeah nevermind no food".

I have never used the springs things your talking about they may work perfectly fine i just have not seen them so i would be skeptical about them keeping the panels together with the weight of a pig and the panels themselves on them. The 4/5ga 16ft feedlot panels are very heavy we have a few and hate moving them. I'm not sure how the logistics of moving 8 of them hooked together without any posts would work out..i dont really think it would be possible from my experience with them.

Over all i really dont think this idea is going to work in either function or movement. Also the 4" spacing on the house a young fox, smaller dog, and bobcats can fit thru that easily, i would suggest if you dont have bobcats make the spacing 3"...if you have bobcats it would need to be smaller yet. Now really unless the pigs are young you shouldnt have to worry much about bobcats and foxes as the pigs will beat the tar out of them but will get beat up in the process also.

So now that ive smashed all your hopes and dreams...ok not really but....i would love to say it would work cause it is a novel idea but i dont see how it could. All that being said what you do make for a pen depends on whether these are breeder pigs or butcher pigs? Meaning short term or long term...if they are butcher pigs do you plan to get new ones each year?

 

[misfitmorgan]

Thanks, latestarter! They will be located inside of an 8 acre pasture that has permanent posts with 3-4 strands of barbed wire, while in the moveable hog panels, but I really don't want my ribs and hams getting out and being scratched up by barbs! Ha!
And I can't imagine chasing them in that big of an area.

I see the reply now....butcher pigs.
Barb wire wont stop them generally if they are running from something, like a predator.

Alternatively why dont you put up electric fence? Pigs respect electric fences big time, one shock and my pigs stay atleast a foot from all fence, this also saves your fences if you have something like woven wire up because they will not be jumping on them or trying to dig under them.

I did also forget to mention with two pigs, that size space your wanting to make would last them maybe 4 days at their current age...as they grow probly 1-2 days. They will pick a corner for the bathroom and the rest is food forage area. On pigs digging, you would be shocked how fast they can dig. One of our 5 month old pigs can dig a hole a foot deep in soft ground in about 2-4 hrs without much trouble.

 

[eviemethugh]

Thanks for such a detailed reply, Morgan! The Premiere brand makes rockstar products, so I have no doubt that the spring/hinges would be great on their own, but just wasn't sure about the panels. We know people pasture hogs with just electric, but I'm pretty worried about coyotes just not giving a damn about one or two strands of electric wire.
My plan for moving them was to unhinge the panel on one end, and push it to the middle. Reattach it there and take off two panels and more them to the end, then take off the "other" end and attach it at the end of the two side panels that were rotated forward. x2. Yes, a lot of work. But we are kind of used to it. It also (in my mind, ha!) seemed like a safer way to keep the pigs contained than turning off electric strands to rearrange the posts, and possibly scaring a pig out and over one of the wires while it was off. Although the pastured pig farmers we know said their pigs were afraid of where the wires used to be, like what you said about "home." Right now the kiddos are so happy to see new clover and roots rolling towards them they almost gallop forward.
We are only growing them out to 200 lbs, and I would prefer a solution that would be reusable with other animals the rest of the year. If it was permanent year round, I think I wouldn't even consider moving them. I could add electric to the bottom, it just sucks to have two electric boxes (we have one on our chickens who just fly over the net anyway...) when one won't be used but 4 months of the year or less.
We do have a tractor with a post (hammer? I don't know), but I think the pigs would be afraid of it if we were out there adding new ones and moving them about every week.
I could possibly make it less of a rectangle and tie it onto a few trees on each side. Heck, I should just let them have the 8 acres! ha! Our resident "hay farmer" would kill me! hahaha!

 

[misfitmorgan]

i know premier make good stuff but i really dont think the springs would hold up to 200-400lbs of pig leaning on the panel and keep it standing up on its own. As i said though i have never seen them in person. The 16ft panels are going to take atleast 2 people to move each panel and as i mentioned as they grow if you want enough new pasture for them your going to be moving the panels pretty much every day. Digging under the panels in even 1 days time can be a real problem, as well as them trying to push or pick up the panels as soon as they figure out they can. To give you an idea of how smart pigs are we built a new stall for our friends pigs to stay in (roughly 4months old atm) we put a regular hook and eye latch on the inside top of the gate to keep it closed because our goats know how to open them when on the outside and we didnt have a normal gate latch on hand. The next day the pigs were out...we thought hmm maybe we forgot to latch it...the next day out again "other person" forgot to latch it...third day out again, then it dawned on us the pigs are opening it. We latched it and acted like we left the barn and watched sure enough about 5 minutes later they had the gate unlatched and walked out of the stall again. That gives you an idea of how smart they get and how fast they learn. They had watched us latch that gate about 3 times the day they were put n the stall...apparently they figured out the thing to open the gate was up at the top where our hand was going. Again i dont think they were quite smart enough to work out what exactly the latch was or how it worked just the area it was in and worked on it with their nose/mouth. We put a proper gate latch on but they can open it in about 15 seconds flat now if we just use the hook and eye latch.

Predators probly wont care about the electric unless you have the strands close enough together and enough to make them care. Honestly for the 2 pigs a quarter acre pasture should be plenty as long as they are getting other food as well. For the roughly $180 it would be in hog panels you could easily pay for enough electric fencing to put up 5 strands of eletric i would think. They are your pigs and you have to figure out what you want but i would hate to see you pay all that money for panels and find out it just doesnt work. Also on pastured pigs it should take closer to 6 months to get them to 200lbs.

 

[eviemethugh]

We ended up doing a "phase 2" near our chickens that is about 350+ square feet of permanent hog panels on wooden posts. They have been there for about two weeks, and for whatever reason really haven't rooted very much. They made a mud hole, and are pretty happy with themselves for that
We are planning to start "Phase 3" probably this week and tie in some electric to our chicken poultry netting since that box is so strong that we have already. That should give them two or three large areas we can move the electric to over the next few months using the hog panels as home base and being able to close the gate and keep them in there while we move the step in posts around (and I guess close the gate at night too?) I would *rather* have them in the woods, and be able to rotate them, but maybe we can buy another box next year since we invested in all of the other fence parts this year.

When you say pastured pigs take closer to 6 months to get to 200 lbs, do you mean 6 months old, or 6 months of raising them from the feeder pig stage? We got them at two months old, thats why I was thinking it would just be 4 more months.

Thanks for all your help!

 

[Latestarter]

Glad things worked out for you. Yeah... sometimes it's not quite "ideal" but... you do what you can You should get one of those walk on animal scales like they have at vet's offices. Then once a week you could give them a treat to lure them onto the scale and track their progress... Alternatively, you could get DH to lift them up and step on the bathroom scale (just kidding ) Picturing poor hubby trying to hold onto a 150 pound squealing, squirming pig...

I think it was six months of pasture time, but every situation is a bit different...quality of pasture, breed of pig, supplemental feed provided, general health of the pigs... I mean there's kinda a lot to consider with the variables and such. Is there a reason why you want specifically 200 pounds? Maybe it would work better to just get a butcher date scheduled (unless you're doing it yourself) and just do it when the time is right for you? If they're 200 great... if 250, even better.

Hope you'll let us know how it all works out in the end.

 

[misfitmorgan]

We ended up doing a "phase 2" near our chickens that is about 350+ square feet of permanent hog panels on wooden posts. They have been there for about two weeks, and for whatever reason really haven't rooted very much. They made a mud hole, and are pretty happy with themselves for that
We are planning to start "Phase 3" probably this week and tie in some electric to our chicken poultry netting since that box is so strong that we have already. That should give them two or three large areas we can move the electric to over the next few months using the hog panels as home base and being able to close the gate and keep them in there while we move the step in posts around (and I guess close the gate at night too?) I would *rather* have them in the woods, and be able to rotate them, but maybe we can buy another box next year since we invested in all of the other fence parts this year.

When you say pastured pigs take closer to 6 months to get to 200 lbs, do you mean 6 months old, or 6 months of raising them from the feeder pig stage? We got them at two months old, thats why I was thinking it would just be 4 more months.

Thanks for all your help!

That sounds like an excellant compromise on what you wanna do and what you CAN do....it always hard to make that choice though. To wait until you can do what you wanna do or do what you can and change it later. We are of course the latter lol!

You can close the pigs in at night if you want our pigs go in stalls in the barn at night and dont mind one bit, in fact if we take to long they will be in their stalls waiting on us to close the gates.

Well "normal" confinement pig raising with 18% protein feed and "modern" pigs takes roughly 6 months to get approx. 200-300lbs. If your raising old world pigs on pasture, with lower protein feed it could take 8-10months for them to get 250bs. It's also good to keep in mind that after 225lbs their feed conversion ratio drops so it takes either more feed or more time to get them up that last 25lbs. Typical confinement raised pigs aim for 2lbs per day weight gain after 4 months of age..at which time pigs are generally 150-175lbs. 2lbs/day from 4-6 months of age would be 270-295lbs. This is on high protein feed and little excersise.

For a typical pasture pig your looking at 6-8months to get to 200lbs if you supplement their feed. A lot of it depends on what exactly your going to be feeding them, what breed they are, and their own genetics...all pigs are not equal. We are raising new gilts and a new boar atm...we bought a new gilt as well. Our new pigs we have had since they were 6 weeks old, they have been on roughly 16% protein, plus hay and pasture and are now 7months old and weigh roughly 150-175lbs. The gilt we bought was raised from 6 weeks old in confinement style on 18% protein and is just now 6.5 months old and weighs approx 250lbs. An acquaintance of ours who raises pigs came over and asked why our new breeders were so small and told us we are not raising them right, well thats true and not true. If we were raising our pigs for meat pigs nope not doing it right....but raising breeders we want them to grow slower and let their skeleton keep up with their weight it will in the long run make them better more healthy breeders. The new gilt we bought was raised as a meat pig expected to go to slaughter(customer backed out on the guy) so we got her for a breeder looking at her now it was a poor investment because she will likely only be able to give us 1 litter as she is in poor condition for breeding.

My side rant aside...the point of all that was our pigs are also likely growing slower because they are Berk, Hamp, Large Black cross...the bought gilt is a purebred Duroc..so she doesnt have a old world breed slowing her growth. Generally Large black, Old English Spotted, Tamworth, mulefoot, etc are slow growth pigs.

You will have to decide if you want ot push the protein to them or not and how fast you want them to grow. From 4 months on is the time to either push it or not until 4 months they should be on at least 16% protein and hay along with pasture. Dont forget water as well...thirsty animals do not eat. Pig/Hog Nipple waterer is your friend.