I used to raise two pigs in the summer for 4-H. The pigs were great since they ate all of the excess milk. I am starting to get over ran with milk again, so a few pigs are definitely in order. I am also thinking of even breeding pigs. Watering the pigs was a huge pain! Now that I will be keeping pigs in the winter, I have no idea how to allow them to have water that isn't frozen. The books at the library about pigs are really basic. I would like a recommendation for more advanced and informative books. Anyone with pig experience, please pm me. I have so many questions.
I have zero pig experience. I say the world could always use more home-crafted cheese! It's easy, I make fresh cheese all the time.
I used to work in the swine barn at Cornell, but we didn't have a problem with water freezing, it was all heated somehow. There must be some kind of submersible you could use? I honestly don't remember what we used when i was a kid, maybe rubber pans, and just refresh the water throughout the day? Check with your local coop extension - most of them have very helpful up to date info, and their job is to help newbies.
Not sure how well a tank heater would work in a pig watering trough-but I suppose you could try it out.We always get our pigs in the spring time and have them on into the summer/fall. We feed them the extra goat milk and they do great. The only bad thing about pigs is that they tend to play in their water trough and get it muddy. You can keep a mud whole, our pig pen is completely in the shade so we haven't had one this year and they are doing fine.
Have no clue...maybe buy a cheap cheap fridge and have it sitting some where out of the way and then place water in pans...when the water freezes go melt is and place it in the freezer for a little bit until it cools? Just a thought I am going off of 2 hours of sleep but thats the best I could come up with if you need to water pigs and its freezing
You would probably have to get a shallow trough and keep a water heater in there. Are you using the pig waterers where they have to bite down on the thing to get the water out? I have no idea how you would keep those from freezing. I've only have a few pigs before, but we never used those...maybe try contacting a local pig breeder and see if they could give you some advice.
I raised pigs for the last couple year, and bred our sow to farrow, of course it's February and it's frozen outside! We used a tank de-icer for outside pigs, though they don't work below -20 I found the hard way for the sows or younger stock I had them in a shed with a heat fan, it was a constant 30F, and I just had to crack the ice on the surface, usually the sow would do that for me lol!
