In the picture above, you can see the outdoor area for the pigs. It's relatively small, just a couple thousand square feet at most. The pigs have access to this area all winter long, and it's separated from the main pasture by electric fence. I've learned that it's best to give the pigs as little space as possible, as they will quickly root up whatever space you give them, quickly turning the winter area into a mud and mucky mess. Instead of giving them a large quantity of space, I'm aiming at trying to give them the highest quality of space.
The outdoor area, on the other hand, is a bit more of a problem. My general goal is to keep the smell of my animals to a minimum. If there is a heavy smell of manure in the air, it means all sorts of bad things are happening: the health and welfare of the animals can be negatively affected, the environment is degraded because of the potential for large amounts of runnoff, my neighbors and my wife might not like me any more, a I don't want to work in a disgusting environment. Last year I didn't have any tools for handling the outdoor pasture area in the winter, and it got pretty gross, muddy, and uncomfortable for the pigs in a hurry. This year, I wanted to stockpile a source of cheap carbon to put down on the ground to help keep the muck under control, cover up some of the manure, and help to slow the runnoff of the manure slurry. The best source of carbon for this is wood chips, as they are easy to move around with the tractor bucket, easy to spread, and have a particle size that is neither too small or too large. Unfortunately, wood chips in this area seem to be going for $10-$12 a yard delivered. I figured I'd need 50-100 yards, and I don't want to fork over that much money this year. Instead, I got a much cheaper source of carbon from a farm down the road: rain soaked round bales:
I've been thinking a lot about how to best handle this in future years. It's clear that I don't need as much carbon if I can keep the area free of rain, as I can handle the indoor area fairly easily. I'm starting to think that perhaps I need to keep the winter pig range under cover and restrict them from going to spaces that get rained on. My fear is that I don't want to end up creating a system that is just a smaller, less efficient version of the commercial pig houses (I visited one when I was back in Michigan over Christmas--a story for another post). I'm also a bit concerned about the amount of manure and runnoff that I'll start generating as I grow the pig herd. I don't have a manure lagoon and I have no desire to build one, so want to continue to manage my manure in the way I'm doing now--as a damp but not liquid mix of carbon and manure that can be composted and spread back on the pastures or garlic beds. If anyone has any advice, please share!