View our piggery design, done by a professional pig farmer here: Piggery Design
Good piggery design isn’t just about buildings and pen dimensions. It’s also about understanding how pigs naturally behave — especially where they choose to dung.
How to influence pigs to make their toilet in a specific place where it is easy to clean:
This isn’t my piggery, but you can see their toilet area along the middle fence. It’s more concentrated near the water nipple, in the bottom corner near the gate.
This area with dung would have been MUCH bigger if you had 30 Porkers in those same pens.
Remedy? – block visibility between pens except for the last 1.5m.
Look – no poos along the left-hand wall – nobody to “talk” to there for pigs.
The Piggery Design Trick: Controlling Where Pigs Poo:
- Given a choice, pigs poo as far from their food as possible – IF POSSIBLE.
- Pigs poo where their water is.
- They also poo where they can SEE each other – because they spend lots of time there – talking to the neighbors.
- So control where they can see each other, and put the water nipple (not the trough) in that spot. Then place self-feeders or feed troughs as far from there as possible — or floor-feed in the sleeping area if it’s concrete. Do this, and you’ll have a much smaller area to clean every day.
A Real Example From My Own Piggery:
In my very first piggery, I had three big pens next to each other, each with enclosed sleeping areas and big open yards — like in the picture.
The fences were chain-link wire mesh so they could see each other everywhere.
One day, they made a hole in the fence – as they do – and I fixed it with a sheet of corrugated iron.
The next day I just opened the gate and picked up all the poos in one square meter. That beat having to go into the pen — with 20 pigs in it — and clean about 12 square meters of poos.The next day I noticed they did not defecate where the iron blocked their view of each other.
I promptly covered the whole fence with iron EXCEPT at the gate.
The next day I just opened the gate and picked up all the poos in 1 square meter instead of having to go into the pen (with 20 pigs in) and clean about 12 square m of poos.
That’s the kind of detail smart piggery design accounts for from day one — a small layout choice now saves real cleaning time for years.
For consultations and custom piggery designs please send your request to info@training4farmers.com
Book an online consultation now: Training4Farmers Consult
Reference on pen design: The Pig Site