The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: loosey on May 15, 2010, 08:59:02 am
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How do I go about this? In our field which is planned for the pigs, someone has previously dug out some kind of very shallow rectangular pit! I'm trying to think of uses for it and was wondering if I could fill it for use as a wallow? It has stone sides and a gravelly base so would probably hold a bit of water?
How do you provide your pigs with s nice slimy mud pit or do you just let them get on with it?! :-\
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Two ways, either spend hours slogging away digging a hole, fill it with water - my way
or sit and watch said human struggling to dig pit, fill with water. Then get up stroll across to the water buckets and throw them on the floor. Sit and wallow in the resulting bog. - Boar's way
Or you could just run a hose pipe in a shallow depression and let the sows do it for you.
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Dig a hole 6 inches by 6 inches by 6 inches deep, Add water and pig, next day add two buckets of water to larger hole.
Repeat until Olympic size wallow has been created by pig !!
Try your pit, if the stones are good enough they might leave them in place, otherwise they may remove them to enlarge. Can see no reason not to start with this and then move onto a home (pig) made one if it doesn't work !
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It seems with mine (and Im very new at this) that if I water the ground they come and mooch it up and create their own wallow.
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Same as HM mine just keep tippin over their drinks and have made a nice slimy muddy wallow which they all lay in together, i am sure there is some pig underneath all of that mud!!! :o :pig:
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I'd put water in the pit and see what happens! I just leave the hose running slowly and the pigs create the wallow! ;D
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In my experience pigs will create their own wallow, and it usually involves mud, not just water, so the worry is you might spend loads of time and effort making a super wallow with stone sides and bottom and your pigs will ignore it and dig one elsewhere. In one of my pig areas i have a wonderful old pond (made by the previous owner) that must be thrity feet across and always has a couple of feet of water in it, and right beside it is a sticky gooey muddy wallow the pigs created and in the summer, that's where they spend their time, not the pond.
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I was going to try filling the hole with mud and adding some water and seeing how it goes from there! We're still a few weeks off our first piggies arriving but have reserved some Cornish Black babies which are due to be be born next week!
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I would love to see some photos of them when they arrive.
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We'll be going to visit them once they are born so I will try my best not to get overexcited and forget my camera!! ::)
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My girls figured out if they dug below their auto drinker they could up end it and lots of lovely water just keeps coming out all day long so they can create a lovely wallow :) thank god I'm not on a water meter!
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My four pigs (Eany, Meany, Miny and Mo) have a little wallow not quite big enough for all four of them and they argue all day about who should be at the bottom! They are gradully snuffling it outwards, but I think that it depends on the breed of pig you have. My Saddlebacks couldn't be bothered to dig at all (and we went to the effort of making a large pit for them and they didn't use it) and my current lot are Berkshires and they clearly love it!
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Funny cause mine are saddlebacks and digging is a favourite hobby