How to Build a Pig House Cheaply and Practically? Floor Area Calculation and Dehumidification Methods

A pig house is a building for raising pigs. According to different breeding purposes, it can be divided into breeding pig houses, gestation pig houses, farrowing pig houses, growing pig houses, fattening pig houses, etc.So how do you build a pig house cheaply and practically? How do you calculate the floor area? How do you dehumidify?

How do you build a pig house cheaply and practically?

1. Avoid choosing an improper site. Some people build pig farms in central locations, and for the convenience of sightseeing and learning, they build the pig farm right next to a highway. This has two disadvantages: first, because people, vehicles, and goods flow past the highway day and night too frequently, the pig farm is prone to outbreaks of infectious diseases; second, the noise is too loud, and the pigs cannot be at peace all day, which is bad for pig growth. When choosing a pig farm site, it is best to be more than 100 m away from the highway, far from villages and livestock product processing plants, with few pedestrians passing by, and located downwind or in a sheltered direction from housing, with high and dry terrain, sheltered from wind and facing the sun, firm soil, strong water permeability, not contaminated by pathogenic microorganisms, and with clean water sources and convenient water access.

2. Avoid poorly arranged pig house facilities. When arranging pig houses, the production needs of the pig herd must be considered. Boar houses should be built in the downwind area of the pig farm, adjacent to the sow houses but kept at a certain distance. Lactating sow houses, pregnant sow houses, growing pig houses, and replacement pig houses should be built somewhat closer to the main gate of the pig farm to facilitate transport.

3. Avoid excessive pig house density. Some pig farmers, in order to save land and reduce investment, build crude and crowded pig houses and cannot carry out scientific and reasonable design and layout, resulting in high pig rearing density, which easily causes environmental contamination and cross-infection among pigs. The distance between pig houses should be at least 8 m or more, and fruit trees or forest trees can be planted in between for shade in winter.

4. Avoid a single construction form. Sow houses, boar houses, and fattening pig houses each have their own detailed requirements, and they cannot all be built the same way. For example, sow houses need farrowing pens, while other pig houses do not. Boar house walls need to be sturdier, and the enclosure walls need to be higher, etc. Therefore, whatever pigs you raise, you must build the corresponding type of pig house.

5. Avoid building pig houses without windows (or with windows that are too small). Some pig farms have no windows at all in the pig houses, and although some have windows, the windows are too small and too few, which is unfavorable for ventilation and cooling inside the house in summer. Under normal circumstances, for a pig house that can raise 10 fattening pigs, the rear wall needs 4 windows of 60-70 cm, and the two gable ends need 2 windows of 50-70 cm.

How do you calculate the floor area of a pig house?

1. Total site area, production building area, and auxiliary building area are calculated according to the area required per commercial fattening pig marketed annually: total site area is 2.5 sq m to 3.0 sq m, production building area is 0.8 sq m to 1.0 sq m, and auxiliary building area is 0.12 sq m to 0.15 sq m.

2. Calculate the site area at 60-70 sq m per basic sow or 3.5-4 sq m per fattening pig marketed annually. Building area is calculated at 20 sq m per basic sow. For general small and medium-sized pig farms, the production area is planned at 40-50 per sow able to breed, and the building area is calculated at 16-20 sq m per sow.

3. Using the three-point rearing system, if the interval is 50-80 m, 600 sows require about 13 ha.

How do you dehumidify a pig house?

After the Winter Solstice, what gives farmers a headache is no longer the upward trend in live pig prices, but rather problems such as low temperatures and high humidity in pig houses appearing one after another. Pigs are very sensitive to changes in environmental temperature and have very poor body temperature regulation ability because pig hair is dense and long. According to weather forecasts in recent days, temperatures are gradually decreasing, and in some areas the temperature has already dropped below 0°C. The drop in temperature not only affects the normal growth of live pigs, but can also cause intestinal, respiratory, and other diseases.

1. What must be done well is keeping the pig house warm. Prepare enough heating energy; replace door and window glass promptly if damage is found, and seal drafts at walls and roofs, but do not block the ventilation holes; solve the problem of large day-night temperature differences in the pig house; while ensuring temperature, reduce humidity, harmful gas concentration, and dust in the pig house as much as possible.

2. Keep the pig pens dry. Some people think that if you want dryness, you cannot flush with water. After flushing, it is wet for at most 1-2 hours, but if you do not flush, the area under the farrowing crates and nursery crates is all manure slurry, wet all day long, and simply cannot dry. These pig farms are very prone to diarrhea, and bacterial growth problems cannot be avoided.

3. Prevention of common diseases on pig farms in winter. The harm caused by swine sarcoptic mange is endless. The main symptoms of swine sarcoptic mange are itching, dermatitis, scabs, and suppuration. If it is not taken seriously enough, after infection causes skin damage, it easily induces Staphylococcus aureus infection, causing exudative dermatitis in pigs. The affected area rapidly spreads to the whole body, is highly contagious, and ultimately causes a severe decline in pig constitution, exhaustion, and death.

4. Farmers must be thoroughly familiar with the most suitable temperatures for each growth stage of the pig herd and control the humidity of the pig house well. If the pig house temperature is too high, the pigs feel hot, which leads to reduced feed intake, stunted growth, poor development, and reduced reproductive capacity; if the pig house temperature is too low, the pigs feel cold, immunity declines, and various diseases are easily induced, and very small piglets may even freeze to death. When raising pigs in winter, in addition to keeping warm, the pig house must also maintain good hygiene management, which can not only reduce the cyclic infection of swine sarcoptic mange in the pig herd, but also reduce bacterial growth. Manure water flowing everywhere on the pig farm and dead water pools nearby, along with the humid environment, also create favorable conditions for viruses.