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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] PIGS AT WORK

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  • From: DGilsen@aol.com
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] PIGS AT WORK
  • Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:11:32 -0400 (EDT)

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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