ohiogoatgirl
Well-known member
This one's for you Ghost! 
opcorn:
Among some people I follow online I came across this style of raising hogs (actual pig hogs) in a deep bedding system. Especially in winter and where someone just does not have access to more space. Reviewing it for other reasons I realized that this could be exactly the kind of bigger scale guinea pig colony setup that would work for a lot of people.
The video. Skip to about 1:10 into it to get right to the setup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ueivh2e0ZBc
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ueivh2e0ZBc[/youtube]
The idea is you set up with cattle panels and some t post under a roof. Inside the panels you use metal roofing. Bed overly deep before putting in animals. Add bedding regularly and slowly it fills in. When your hogs are ready to harvest in the fall you have a compost pile!
For GPs you could probably line it with something lighter or cheaper as long as they didn't chew it. I was even thinking something like that you could set up a greenhouse. Have a couple pens like that. Grow out male/female. However many breeding pens. One side you have pens, the other side you have your usual garden starts etc. After garden starts are out you plant a bunch of short crops (radish) or cut and come again (lettuce) for feeding the GPs. Early enough in the fall you start cold season crops. You heat the greenhouse just to keep it above freezing. This keeps the GPs decent and warm enough to keep a cold season plant growing a while/through fall and winter for green feed. Thinking like buckwheat, winter wheat and oats, kale,...
In the spring you could put the GPs in a temporary pen, pull the posts out, remove the panels and metal. Then shovel away the compost to the garden! Set pen back up. And if you were just doing one bigger pen (cattle panels are 16ft long) and not a whole lot of GPs in there you could probably get by quite a while before needing to pull it apart. If you had a portable shelter like in the video you could even just take it all down and set it up another spot. Then just plant right into the big pile like a ready made raised bed.
https://farmersfriendllc.com/products/s ... lar-tunnel
4 year rating but they are meant to be season extenders and able to put up and take down, not permanent. I need that but permanent and at that price :mrgreen: :roll:
opcorn: Among some people I follow online I came across this style of raising hogs (actual pig hogs) in a deep bedding system. Especially in winter and where someone just does not have access to more space. Reviewing it for other reasons I realized that this could be exactly the kind of bigger scale guinea pig colony setup that would work for a lot of people.
The video. Skip to about 1:10 into it to get right to the setup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ueivh2e0ZBc
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ueivh2e0ZBc[/youtube]
The idea is you set up with cattle panels and some t post under a roof. Inside the panels you use metal roofing. Bed overly deep before putting in animals. Add bedding regularly and slowly it fills in. When your hogs are ready to harvest in the fall you have a compost pile!
For GPs you could probably line it with something lighter or cheaper as long as they didn't chew it. I was even thinking something like that you could set up a greenhouse. Have a couple pens like that. Grow out male/female. However many breeding pens. One side you have pens, the other side you have your usual garden starts etc. After garden starts are out you plant a bunch of short crops (radish) or cut and come again (lettuce) for feeding the GPs. Early enough in the fall you start cold season crops. You heat the greenhouse just to keep it above freezing. This keeps the GPs decent and warm enough to keep a cold season plant growing a while/through fall and winter for green feed. Thinking like buckwheat, winter wheat and oats, kale,...
In the spring you could put the GPs in a temporary pen, pull the posts out, remove the panels and metal. Then shovel away the compost to the garden! Set pen back up. And if you were just doing one bigger pen (cattle panels are 16ft long) and not a whole lot of GPs in there you could probably get by quite a while before needing to pull it apart. If you had a portable shelter like in the video you could even just take it all down and set it up another spot. Then just plant right into the big pile like a ready made raised bed.
https://farmersfriendllc.com/products/s ... lar-tunnel
4 year rating but they are meant to be season extenders and able to put up and take down, not permanent. I need that but permanent and at that price :mrgreen: :roll:
