permaculture

[DGilsen@aol.com]

Can you tell me what exactly is a  pig tractor?  Is it just a  pen, or is 
it a contraption?  I heard of a contraption that looked like a  large hamster 
wheel a tin can on its side that had the bars welded about one  foot apart 
on the sides. The pigs rooted through the bars on the ground and as  they 
leaned on the bars of the "hamster wheel" to get to other goodies the wheel  
would roll to greener pastures and the pigs learned to corroperate to go in a 
 desired direction.  the pigs entered in the end of the "wheel. The thing  
was about six or seven feet tall I believe.  This was made out of steel  
wagon type wheels on the ends with the bars welded from one end of the wheel 
to 
 the other.  one end had a door for the critters to enter and exit.
 
 
In a message dated 10/11/2011 7:49:51 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,  
rollens@fidnet.com writes:

Just be  cautious because when the cute little darling gets physically 
mature and comes  in heat, she may tear the pen completely apart, electric 
wire 
and all, and goo  visiting, or worse, on a feeding binge!  Guess how I  
know???

Lisa


On Oct 10, 2011, at 11:57 PM, Cory Brennan  wrote:

> We set up a pig tractor this summer at Pine Ridge  reservation, and it 
worked great. The pig ate all the weeds except vervain,  tilled the soil, and 
replanted squash seeds and curly dock for us - when we  noticed that, we 
started feeding her stuff we wanted planted and that worked  pretty good too. 
We planted cover crops where she dug, and that worked good  too, tho it 
started getting too hot and dry, and with no irrigation, the  pioneers we 
didn't 
want (like goathead) were coming back in so we moved her  back to a 
permanent pen. But I would do that again in an instant to clear a  field 
rather than 
manually doing it. She worked really fast too - in only a  few days, her 
pen area would be cleared. We were using her to clear a fairly  large space 
for a food forest, but only got a small portion of it done. What I  will do 
next spring if we still have access to her is put some composted  manure and 
straw in the pen, let her dig that in while she eats the weeds  (she
> doesn't leave enough manure herself in the few days it takes her  to eat 
stuff, though there is some), then plant cover crop and nitro fixers as  
soon as we move her. It would be a relatively labor free way of turning the  
compacted clay pioneer soil into food forest material...
> 
> Cory  
> 
> 
>  ________________________________

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