Along with creating my Gardening Plan from Dollar Tree items, Piglet Day is one of my favorite times of the year. This is the name we have given to the day we pickup our Piglets. It took several years of trial and error. But, we have finally perfected the easy ways to transport piglets and how to make a simple pig pen that minimizes the workload. I am now able to look forward to this day and welcome the arrival of our plump and adorable piglets.

We pick up our piglets sometime during the first two weeks of March. In the past, this was quite the stressful day and raising the pigs continued to be a time-consuming project. We had a pig pen that was not user-friendly. And, we were using open buckets for both feed and water. On top of this, we had no running water at the barn, and the barn is close to 1/4 of a mile from our house.

Store-bought pig feeders can be quite pricey. They can also be very lightweight, which means that a full grown hog can easily wreck them if they aren’t chained down. We have always found it easier and cheaper to build a homemade automatic pig feeder from Plywood instead of buying one. It only requires 4 materials, a few simple tools, and about 2 hours of time.

Once a year, in March, we pick up our piglets from a neighboring farm. We feed and care for them through July, and butcher when they are about 6-7 months old. The pigs are usually around 200 pounds at that point, and yield very tender pork. Obviously, to go from the 25 pound piglet to a 200 pound pig requires a lot of feed. But, if the pig pen is set up properly with an automatic nipple waterer and enough automatic feeders, the work load is minimal.