I raised pigs of my own for the first time this year; bought them before moving to my property and moved them up a week after I did.
I have participated in raising pigs before, but they have always gone in for slaughter by around the end of October.
7 pigs. I built them a house, about 5.5x11ft inside, and moved it into each new electric-enclosed paddock. It has a closed back, sides 70% closed, open on the high side; on skids, no floor.
Standing height for a person inside, intended for multiple purposes.
Butcher date was mid december. I kept the house back to the prevailing winds, moved to fresh ground when it got muddy, and put down
hay for bedding when it got around 0C. All seemed well; I watched their sleeping patterns and the piling never became excessive; around 1.25 pigs deep in the coldest weather.
A week before butcher date some of my pigs started coughing. Temperatures were between 2C and -6C. A more experienced farmer friend visited and was confident it was pneumonia; everyone said drugs, possibly with vet involvement. I was horrified at the idea of medicating right before slaughter, even though it was on label for some drugs... and equally horrified at the idea of delaying, with my very marginal infrastructure caring for them was time consuming and I had a million other things to do.
I spent a very long couple days moving a million things out of my tumbledown barn and getting the pigs inside electric, inside the barn. I was worried they'd knock the building down if I let them scratch on the posts/walls! No perimeter fencing or helpers. Good times.
I made them a bed of solid topped
pallets and straw with extra windbreaks in the least breezy part of the barn, fed them garlic and put electrolytes in the
water, and they got better within 36 hours. Crisis averted. They hated me for locking them inside, despite plenty of room, but it was only 5 nights.
But! What about next time? I do not like floors on mobile
shelters. They need cleaning, transfer
pests, rot and need replacing, and generally increase hassle.
Yet some people locally swear they are necessary here, in winter, for hogs. This, they tell me, is why my hogs got sick; because the damp cold here is too much despite bedding, and the animals need to be off the ground.
My hope is the same floorless house with more enclosed sides will do better... in fact I did enclose it further with salvaged plastic, the night before moving them to the barn anyhow.
So, PNW pig farmers of permies(PNWPFoP), what do your experiences suggest?