Back in 2012 I got a wild hair to mill the oak lumber and put together a new multi purpose pig barn. I had been collecting nursery panels for a few years and wanted to build a farrowing system that had large comfortable stall for the sows and piglets that after a couple of weeks could be opened up for them to all mingle together. With a decent size lot out the side and and gate that opened onto a 5 acres pasture on the back. Oak is difficult to work with when building structures. Nails are pretty much a non starter and forget a nail gun. Jointing, Pegs, pilot holes and screws are the order of the day when building with oak. Very time consuming but the end product is a very tough, rot resistant structure the even hogs can't tear up. on half of the barn floor I laid out old soft foot hog floors that I got from a confinement that upgraded to more modern floors. Mine just lay on the surface and over the years have gotten buried under a few inches of dirt. What they do is stop the hogs from rooting out the dirt in the floor. On the other half I used nothing on the surface just hard packed clay. Every two years I have to clean out the water way that leads away from the barn and put all of the dirt back in that the hogs root out of that side that is just clay. After two years they root about 12" of the clay out of the barns East floor. Easy enough to replace, I just take some of the roof tin off and dump the clay from the waterway through the roof opening and screw the tin back on the roof. The hogs take about a week to get that big mound of dirt leveled out and compacted for another two years. When farrowing is done the nursery gates just swing up against the wall and it is one big open area for them to dust in, and lay in the shade. 100-120 piglets are born in this barn every year and another 120-140 born in the South Barn which is pretty much a duplicate of this barn. Each of the barns has their own 5 acre training pasture that the piglets get to explore and learn how to forage on at about 6 weeks old until about 4 months old before they get put into finishing groups or selected to be retained for the breeding herd. Nothing fancy about these barns but they are low cost and very functional. A bandmill on a homestead type operation with plenty available timber is a must in my book. Milling your own lumber for projects save a small fortune. My mill (a Hud-Son 330Pro) paid for itself the first building made from lumber milled on it. Milling other folks logs into lumber is also a nice little bit of money over the winter when there is not a lot of money coming in from other sources. I am sitting on a dozen 8' 4" 28" - 30" diameter wild black cherry logs I will mill for a guy in town sometime in November. I like to let the bark get loosened up by the beetle larvae and strip it off and then pressure wash the logs (Saves some wear and tear on the bands). He is going to use them for the wall in his office and wants them cut into 3/4" thick 8' long and as many 8" wide planks as they will make and then ran through the planer to smooth them off and make them uniform. Most of the big Mills won't touch small custom jobs, so those of us with band mills pick up some decent work either full time or as a winter occupation like I do. A couple of the guys with the bigger trailer mounted mills make a pretty good living traveling form site to site year round. LOL after milling a bunch of rough cut 2x4s and then walking into Lowes and looking at 2x4s you find yerself asking.......... where is the rest of the 2x4 in their 2x4s Anyway after being down due to health issues the last few years (and in much better shape now) The Hog barn was past due for clay replacement. When half of it turns into a swamp because water is running in instead shedding out and into the water way....... yeah time to replace the dirt I think I will go ahead and use the last of my softfoot floors and lay then down in there after the hogs level the mound out this time. But it has been entertaining watching the little pigs learn to root in there over the years. Walls are off and section of roof to allow the dumping of lots of dirt into the building. Total cost of this barn Using salvaged tin, a 25# box of 4" deck screws and the box of roof screws came in at $185 . Won't count the number of hours or the oak lumber. Probably a small fortune if I tallied the value of the lumber up. I built this completely by myself with no help, so a few places are not level. Hard to get long boards level, while holding it in one hand and trying to keep the screw on the driver bit in the drill in the other hand..... But I have yet to hear the hogs complain about It took about 3 weeks to build it working 3-4 hours per day on it. Not bad for solo work. 8 years old now and not showing any signs of falling down in my lifetime. After the last dirt refill that was actually about 6" higher than on the other side of the gate. Pic gives a idea of how much dirt hogs can move with those noses. Digging the waterway out and returning the clay to the barn floor. Also building the slop off the barn up to better drain the water away from the barn. I took the wood off half the side. I used hickory where it is missing and it just rots too fast. So going to replace it with post oak and put a wider slide door on instead of the 36" man door. Same with all the gaps between the wall boards.. I used hickory for a lot of it and after 8 years it was rotting out So I will be cutting a lot 1" x3" pieces to get the gaps sealed up.
