Pig Porch – October, 2009

Submitted by Michael McKay on October 23, 2009 - 7:45pm
Pig porch - full

pig porchclick to enlarge

For years I’ve been building a modest but awkward ramp for getting the pigs from their little house into the stock trailer when it’s time for them to go meet their maker. Inevitably, this ends up being a combination of straw bales, plywood, rope and a few other things. It’s always worked (we haven’t lost a pig yet) but it’s been a pain in the butt and has never been sufficiently sturdy that we could back the trailer up to the pig barn and let them go in and out overnight to get used to the trailer. Getting them used to the trailer is critical. There’s nothing more interesting than locking a dozen 300 lb plus pigs in a small shed and then getting in with them to try to convince them to enter the ‘death’ trailer when it’s something they haven’t seen before.

So this year I came up with a dozen different ideas as to how to securely bridge the 3 feet from the pig house door to the trailer door. Most of those ideas involved pneumatics, wheels, iron, a building permit, a structural engineer’s certification and about $2000. Just as I was about to contact the list of specialty vendors for the various parts I came up with a better idea: a pig porch. This is what it looks like when it’s not in use.

I’m rather proud of this. It even looks like it belongs there, unlike so many of my construction projects on the farm. The best part is that it worked. The night before we were to take them to the butcher I backed the trailer up to the pig porch, opened the trailer and pig house doors and let them roam in and out.

They loved it and – as an added bonus – it allowed them several extra hours to completely trash the trailer. In the past, they only had a few hours during the trip to the butcher to flip over the trailer floor mats, crap on everything (including the ceiling – I’m convinced that they stand on their heads and poop forcefully) and generally make me pay their final price for sending them on to their next purpose in life. Oh, and it only cost about $70 – the cheapest project I’ve ever done!

My next project is to build little rocking chairs for them so they can use the porch on cool summer evenings. Let’s see, I think some pneumatics to rock the chairs, maybe an electronically activated awning and a structural certification that the chairs won’t collapse.