The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: greenbeast on July 28, 2016, 12:21:36 pm
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I'm looking to refine our system a little.
We rear all outdoor.
Looking at good solutions for creep feeding and watering piglets.
Have used cube drinkers, not ruling them out but they do get used by and turned over by sows.
Feeding, would like to keep the sows away from the grower food.
Am wondering about an area just away from the ark that is protected from the sow. Just now thinking an overturned and pegged down IBC cage might work
Any thoughts?
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We creep fed briefly during the foot & mouth outbreak in 2000. Very quickly we ended up feeding most of the neighbourhood's rooks, crows, jackdaws, pigeons, squirrels and anything else that could get in !
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ah yes, we already have that problem with out chicken and waterfowl food.
good point.
although i could just put in enough for them to eat like i would for the mums and use the area to provide water to them that isn't drunk and/or destroyed by the sows.
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If you can get a water pipe to them I recommend Suevia drinkers, distributed in the UK by Hanco. The ones on our farm have survived 35 years of pigs.
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I had the opposite problem with my last lot, keeping them out of mum's dinner once they'd scoffed down theirs as she was such a softy with them! Much easier to manage though, I just weaned them a week earlier than I was intending.
I looked into getting an IBC cage too and it seems a lot of people do use them, so that could be a good bet.
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Not sure about the concept of "pegging down" an IBC crate, though. Pigs love to root things up. Bolting it to a couple of fenceposts inside the cage might work. It would get very muddy in Winter, though.
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My friend uses a lamb creep feeder. It has an overhang at the front. You would need to put it in fenced area where only the piglets have access to.