What’s the best winter housing for pigs in cold climates?
When you don’t have an insulated building, can you still keep pigs over winter in a really cold climate?
Yes, you can!
You have a few options, and we have used many different ones over the years.
Straw bales. Many farmers just put out lots of straw bales, and the pigs will bury under them.
Old wooden grain bins: We used these for years and still do. They work great, but it can be a challenge getting small straw bales into them, especially if you have a 6-foot snowdrift to tackle! I’m getting too old to be lugging bales of straw around; it’s a young person’s game! We tend to get big round bales put in front of the door, and the pigs will take them into the shelter themselves, and you can always help -we find this is easier than dealing with 50lb small straw bales.
I like the pigs to do it themselves. Making a bed is part of their natural behaviour. They carry straw, or sticks, or whatever they can find, around in their mouths and make a bed.
A Note on Straw
Long-Stem is best for outdoor pigs - It is made with conventional combines, keeping the straw stems long, hollow, and largely intact.
Short / Fine Straw is made with a Rotary combine, these process the crop more aggressively, which breaks, crimps, and chops the straw into shorter, finer pieces before it hits the swath. This tends to blow away outside.
Calf Shelters: We found that a calf shelter works best for us. It has a low roof, and ours has a metal frame. They will soon destroy anything made of wood!
Calf shelters are open-fronted, so to help keep the wind from blowing on them, we covered the shelter with a heavy-duty tarp, and yes, I do expect them to destroy it eventually, but in the meantime it covers the whole shelter and the front too. The low roof and the fact that we have all our pigs running together mean they generate enough heat to keep the shelter really warm.
We also put large round straw bales in front of the shelter, and the pigs make their own bed.
They are toasty warm in there all winter!
Hoggit House: We have now buried the calf shelter in the ground to keep it even warmer - we will see how this goes after a couple of years. Last year, we had so much snow that halfway through winter we couldn’t get to it to add more straw, so this year we will have to make sure we have enough straw in front of it to last all winter.
For more information on raising pigs, check out my e-books!
Based on our experiences free ranging pigs in Saskatchewan, this downloadable guide is packed with tips on housing, feeding, watering, fencing and handling pigs.
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