Maternity ward complete and first guest moves in

We moved Delilah, the in-pig Berkshire gilt, into the newly completed maternity ward late today.

She’s due to farrow from Monday onwards and as the temperature has dropped to well below zero of a night, we decided it was best for her and the piglets to come in.

To accommodate her, and future farrowing gilts or sows, we’ve converted one of the pens in the byre into a “maternity ward”.

We’ve put in a long and shallow water trough (less chance for piglets to drown), a 500w work light so we can provide more light in an emergency and built a creep to enclose one of the corners.

The creep was made out of a tubular steel roof rack from a Land Rover Defender 110. It was being stored in the rafters of the hay shed and, as we already have a roof rack on our Defender, I decided set about turning it into a creep.

The first task was to dismantle the roof rack, which took a lot longer than expected as many of the bolts and screws had rusted solid. Still, I managed to keep all but one small section useable.

Next, I had to work out the best dimensions for the creep while minimising the amount of cutting and drilling required.

Test fitting showed I could build a creep using the front third of the roof rack, plus a couple of the curved sections from the back and a handful of 10mm nuts and bolts that I had lying around. The nuts and bolts proved to be an exact match for those used as captive nuts and bolts on the sections of roof rack.

Assembly was much more straightforward, and I made sure to coat each bolt with a smear of copper grease so it would be easier to disassemble in future.

I then took the creep through to the pen and set it across its corner, so I could place three spacer of pressure-treated wooden between the bottom bar and the floor. The spacers will keep the metal creep clear of pig muck and urine.

Then came the hardest part - drilling the holes in the concrete floor that will be used to anchor the creep.

I have a heavy duty Bosch hammer driller that’s easily up to the job, but even so it takes a lot of drilling to cut a hole 50mm deep by 16 wide in solid concrete. And I had four to do.

The creep was then bolted to the floor using M10 rawlbolts, tightened with a torque wrench to 16Nm. Tw0 M8 rawlbolts attach it to the walls, again both sunk 50mm deep into the breeze blocks and tightened to 16Nm.

The creep will be finished with a wooden platform, made of four 2×4s pressure-treated joists with salvaged decking boards on top. This will keep the piglets off the floor.

The creep had infra-red lamp above it, so the combination of wooden floor, straw bedding and heat lamp should keep the piglets warm and dry, while also preventing the sow rolling on them.

When Delilah has farrowed, she and the piglets will stay in the pen for a week or two, depending on her condition and theirs before going out to the insulated pig hut until they’re weaned.

As for the rest of the roof rack, it’s already been suggested that I use some of it to make a pot rack for the kitchen - which is a brilliant idea as we were running out of space.

And I’m sure I’ll find a use for the final third. Nothing goes to waste around here!