Seventeen (17) principles to note in the design of piggery

Piggery is the house where pigs are kept and reared. Pig farming is a lucrative business because pigs are large animals that produce considerable quantities of meat, produce a number of piglets in one gestation period and the children grow very fast. Efficient housing design for pigs makes management easier and helps the farmer to successfully rear up to 85% more of all the live born piglets to market weight in the shortest possible time.

Piggery is usually made of uniform layout of rooms divided into near equal sections with dwarf internal walls.

A good piggery should contain the following features:

1. The floor of the piggery should be made of cement and must not be slippery.
2. The floor should slope towards the sides and to the front so that urine and waste can drain into a shallow manure channel at the front of the pen.
3. The house must be built in such a way that the pigs are protected against extreme temperatures and other bad weather conditions such as cold wind and continuous rain.
4. Each pig space should be 4.5 m to 4.5 m with a passage of about 1.2 m.
5. The area in which the pigs lie down should ideally not have a slatted floor to make it more comfortable.
6. The fully slated floor surface should be finished with reinforced concrete sections.
7. No straw is spread out on the slatted floors so that liquid dung (slurry) can be removed via collection channels. It is stored for four, six or eight months in high or deep containers, or in plastic-lined reservoirs dug in the earth.
8. Allowance should be made for gilts (young sows) corresponding to approximately 5% of the number of productive sows and boars.
9. Boars are kept separately in their own pen. One boar is kept for every 15 – 25 sows.
10. Sows are brought to the boar to be served in the boar pen. The pen should be 9 – 10 m², with the short side at least 2 m wide so that the boar can easily turn around it.
11. The breeding shed requires separate pen sections (serving pen, dry sow pen, farrowing pen and piglet rearing pen) and aisles to allow movement of animals.
12. Feeding aisles are often included. The floor of these aisle should be made with 25 mm compound cement/sand screed on 100 mm of sub-concrete and 25 mm sand bed.
13. Lack of water is the first limiting factor for a high milk production. The sow trough should be provided with a high yielding water nipple (10 – 13 litres/min) because low water yield from nipples is one of the most common technology failures in farrowing units.
14. The sow trough should be shaped to accommodate the sow’s anatomy (head) and eating motions. Generally, it should have a volume of at least 20 litres. The trough design should be without any blind corners or sharp edges that may injure the sow.
15. Piglets should also have access to a water nipple as small as water bowl.
16. Fattening sheds for pigs must be of solid construction and have adequate thermal insulation to maintain the desired temperature.
17. During the second or main fattening period, the store pigs are kept ten (10) to a stall and fed dry or liquid feed from trough and the feeding area should have enough space for double trough.