The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: Buffy the eggs layer on September 06, 2015, 09:29:55 pm
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What are the pros and cons of arks with floors please?
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Mine doesn't have a floor and the pigs seem to like the direct contact, they just have a layer of straw.
My goats have a floor which gets covered in pee and poo and requires lots regular cleaning.
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All mine have floors - pros I think are that they mean dry flooring in winter even when it's wet (I live on a Welsh hillside) and the floors make it pretty easy to sweep out when necessary. They also tend then to be much heavier. Which on the plus side means the bigger pigs don't push them around but on the negative (and it is a real negative for me) it is hard to move them to other areas of ground precisely because they're heavy - I then need to tow them on their skids or borrow bigger kit to lift them over fences.
Martha R
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My answer is exactly the same as Caroline's and I am also in Cambridgeshire so maybe this depends a bit on the terrain and amount of rain. Yesterday we did an Ark for the goats with no floor, this one will be used as a day shelter rather than overnight accommodation though.
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We didn't have a floor when we had a first lot of weaners and the pigs seemed to be ok. They sort of dug out a bit of a hollow and put their straw in it. OH then decided he wanted a floor for the next set. The floor is about 4 inches off the ground and is not attached to the house so this get rounds Martha's problem of it being too heavy. We just lift the house off if we want to do a through clean but mostly we don't need to touch it before they go on their journey.
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I use stable mats.
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Where we are on the south coast (Hampshire) with heavy clay soil, having raised floors kept the pigs above the level of waterlogged, gluey mud soup all round the ark. Our floors also were independent platforms, and the ark just lifted off the top.
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We don't have floors but we do have quite free draining soil.
If things get really wet we just pull out the worst of the bedding and top up with more straw every week or so, at £20 a bale you can use a lot of straw before the cost of a floor makes sense.
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Thanks everyone,
we have very dry sand soil here but you never know how the ground will get with pooing and poaching so moving the arcs is a good idea. Like Martha I would have to pull the ark along with the pick up or the tractor.
The separate floor sounds like a best of both worlds.
:thumbsup:
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We are in the Lake District and so it is wet. I would say that more important than a floor is to have your tins sitting onto wood as the tins eventually rot in the wet. When the pigs are in residence they do a good job of housekeeping and you find an earth floor with straw will keep dry. Often you find once the ark is empty for a while it starts to get wet inside. However if the land around is poached then they will clean their legs off on the bed. Some type of hard stand outside the front door helps. Road planings are good. They are also good around gateways and feeding areas. Obviously topping up with straw in the ark creates a deep litter system so the heat generated keeps the bed dry.
Given that it would be unusual for a pig to soil its bed mucking out on an earth floor isn't that bad. As they eat some of the bed you top up more than clean it out anyway.
If you go with a floor then make sure it isn't slippery wood or prone to splinters.
Depending on how often you intend to move or maybe you don't need to move at all railway sleepers make a good base to sit the ark on as they are strong and have a good depth. The down side is moving them to re site the ark.
I would have as least possible wood in any ark. Pigs will chew it.
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All outdoor pig accommodation needs solid wooden floors with plenty of straw, well off the ground on substantial timbers, this both keeps them warm & dry as well as removing mud from their bodies.
Also as pigs don't poo in there own nest there is no need to muck out except to remove the acumalated dirt once a year
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Thanks Bob.
I have just been reading through my BPEX binder and apparently pigs raised on slats have a better K0% than those on straw........ :thinking: Why would that be I wonder? Heat loss / stress?
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My experience is this. If you have a floor in an ark make sure it's separate from the ark as cleaning out is back breaking otherwise. We have several arks here some with, some without and in the drier months we don't bother with the floors just straw straight onto the ground. The advantage of a floor is when you need to move an ark onto a new bit of ground and the ground is wet. Otherwise we seem to manage pretty well without.
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this is our 1st experience….we have sloping land, so i did make an ark with a floor, and built a big door at the back for cleaning..we have only had the pigs for a week, but so far, the ark is spotless, we have been very surprised in how clean they are….but as i said, we have only had them a week
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John,
I am on my third set of weaners, due to go off at the begining of next month, and all have kept their home spotless.
This time I have cleaned it once but thats because the weather has been soooo wet that naturally the straw has got wet with them going in and out. Other than that its been as sweet smelling as they day they arrived. I have never known any of them to wee or poo in their ark :thumbsup:
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John,
I am on my third set of weaners, due to go off at the begining of next month, and all have kept their home spotless.
This time I have cleaned it once but thats because the weather has been soooo wet that naturally the straw has got wet with them going in and out. Other than that its been as sweet smelling as they day they arrived. I have never known any of them to wee or poo in their ark :thumbsup:
pigs are good. love 'em
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They do indeed keep their nest clean but I often here people refer to them making a toilet area? In all the time I cared for rare breed pigs kept in stys None of them made a loo but simply wandered about poohing at will. My ranging Kunes do it anywhere and everywhere too so whats the "toilet story"
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ours seem to poo at one end of their run,
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for the first couple of months ours were pooing in one place, on a stony bit, making it easy for us to pick it up.
Since we have had all the rain and the other end of their pen has turned into a swamp they have decided to poo there instead. Poo picking is a nightmare now, trying to pick the lumps out of a mud soup. YUK
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Right,
I will have a word with my boys about the random poohing :-J
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ha ha, poo-picking for pigs. Some people have too much time on their hands....
Out of itnerest our arks have no floors. They did when bought by their previous owner but i've been dismantling and moving them from a well developed woodland (it has grown up around the arks) and the floors are either staying or a job for another time entirely.
But we haven't gone throuh a winter yet.
My OH is talking about putting heavy slabs down but i think this might be too cold.
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ha ha, poo-picking for pigs. Some people have too much time on their hands....
Out of itnerest our arks have no floors. They did when bought by their previous owner but i've been dismantling and moving them from a well developed woodland (it has grown up around the arks) and the floors are either staying or a job for another time entirely.
But we haven't gone throuh a winter yet.
My OH is talking about putting heavy slabs down but i think this might be too cold.
Just a word of warning on the heavy slabs. It doesn't seem to matter how heavy they are the pigs manage to destroy them. On top of that we had only had this set of weaners about a month when one had a rectal prolapse (not nice at all but luckily she has recovered well) and we think it was because she was straining to move the slabs around.
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we think it was because she was straining to move the slabs around.
ha ha, pigs you gotta love them.
Yeah i'm, not keen on moving them myself.
I might see about getting the floors from their current woodland home. Will be able to stack them several high on the trailer if we can lift and carry them out of woods.
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Hi, we are not talking wooden slats, but solid floor, preferred wood, at least 25mm thick (planks or plywood)
Bob Dean
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ha ha, pigs you gotta love them.
Yeah i'm, not keen on moving them myself.
y
Yes indeed - mine found some full size concrete blocks whilst rooting - they tossed them aside like they were made of Balsa wood!
Ark floor here is 18mm ply supported on joists.
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a base is an advantage to the pig in winter to stop the damp rising into their bedding. you would want the ground underneath to be flat as a heavy pig could damage the base where it joins the sty in the ground is uneven. we had a floor-less arks with rubber matting but if I had the choice a base of some sort is a must during wet windy winters.
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a base is an advantage to the pig in winter to stop the damp rising into their bedding. you would want the ground underneath to be flat as a heavy pig could damage the base where it joins the sty in the ground is uneven. we had a floor-less arks with rubber matting but if I had the choice a base of some sort is a must during wet windy winters.
Or in fact wet windy summers ;D
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Definitely go for a floor. We only have weaners for the summer and the last two years they have been OK without a floor. This year with the rubbish summer up in Aberdeenshire the ark has flooded and turned to mud inside. The paddock has dried out but the ark is still sloppy mud due to compaction by their feet, I’ll need to move it and fit a floor.
[/size] Meanwhile the pigs are happily sleeping in a livestock trailer.
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[/size] Speaking of pooing in their housing , our first two weaners did this, I think because they had too much space. I reduced the space by adding some straw bales and this to stoped it. Over time the pigs broke the bales down and they ended up making their own beds[/size][size=78%].[/size]
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Love those pigs :pig: I put some new straw in my floor less ark last night as it is getting a bit colder. The delightful adolescents sauntered out of bed at about 9.45 this morning, clearly only breakfast forced them out of their comfortable new beds.
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Our ark is built as a lean-to in a corner made by 2 stone walls, and the floor is outdoor grade plywood fixed on top of 2 pallets. The soil here is heavy clay and holds a lot of surface water when it rains, so I thought a raised floor was essential to keep them dry and warm.
We got our 2 piggies as weaners and they've kept their bed spotless, I've been in to check a few times and I could honestly sleep in there myself! I've given them extra straw from time to time but quite often they chuck it out, as if they think there's already plenty in there. They've made a toilet area in part of the pen furthest from their ark and I've not poo-picked, but will clean it up after they've gone.
Overall, I've found them to be the least trouble of all our livestock (sheep, poultry and ponies!).
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Well after talking on board all your comments I have built my pig accommodation and opted for,.....
My 10 x 8 pig shed on a hard standing with a wood floor,
My 6 x 8 Pig shed in the wood on a frame of sleepers without a floor but with dried bracken as a base topped with sheep fleeces and covered in straw.
My 4 x 5 Pig shelter in the pasture on a sand base without a floor but with lots of straw.
We will see how we go on through the coming months and what this winter throws our way. The floored buildings on the hard standing allow me to bring the pigs off the land in the event of a heavy snowfall and keep them warm and dry. Hopefully the others will stay dry but if not I have the option of slotting in some pallets and boarding them over.
I do hope they like the smell of creosote :eyelashes: [size=78%] [/size]
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with the rain we've had recently and our clay ground, we've decided we need to floor the arcs ::)