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Youngblood made a cement hog trough sometime before I entered the world lo these 44 years. I don't remember him using any other for feeding hogs in the pasture for the entireity of the time I lived at home. However, it has since been lost or destroyed (I'd ask him exactly what happened to it but he's taking a nap). At any rate, when I got in this afternoon from work, he informed me that he had, just this morning, constructed a new one. I rushed to go see it and here is a picture of what it looks like so far:



The way he made it was that he dug an appropriate sized hole, lined it with some scrap chicken wire, poured some cement in, put in the big black pot he used as a form and then filled in around the pot with more cement. He is planning to make a second one: one for food, the other for water. If these two troughs turn out as well as the one he made before I was born, I will never need any more unless I ramp up operations. Unlikely since my goal is to reproduce Jamon Iberico de Belotta.

Very interesting George. I see that he left some wire sticking up above the cement, I am guessing that he will cut that off when everything hardens off. I wondered how it worked having it flush with the ground rather than sticking up above the ground a bit. I wonder if he has problems with the pigs pushing stuff into their food and water such as bedding, poop dirt etc ?

I love it George. That is always one of the biggest challenges, is trying to keep water around for hogs. They'll just flip anything you put out there over, or lay on it, or break it. Those are going to be huge assets to your program. Thanks a lot for sharing the technique, I'm using that next time I raise some, for sure.

You know, that Quikrete stuff, iffn ya don't add nuff water to it, when you try to pick it up, it'll turn right to powder.

Tomorrow, after a trip to Lowe's for more Quikrete, . . . Trial #2.

ooooh...a learning experience After all that work too.....keeping my fingers crossed for you for trial #2.

Trial #2 has been completed. We started gathering up supplies and tools a little after 8:00 and put the last tool up just before 10:00. I lost 3.5 pounds via sweat but got to participate from start to finish this time. I didn't measure the dimensions of the hole "we" dug because Youngblood won't tolerate such foolishness while he's in the middle of a job. I'll go back later once the trough is moved and get the width and depth.

Tis possible that this design could be improved upon by using a prefabricated form with perfectly vertical sides which would then allow the finished trough to be turned on edge and rolled. A rollable trough would be exceptionally useful for those of us that adhere to a paddock-shift paradigm. However, being the student of the world's most impatient teacher doesn't lend itself to making design modifications midstream.

Again, we used scrap chicken wire to line the hole, stood on it until enough Quikrete had been pour in to hold it in place, and smoothed out the 4 60-pound bags of Quikrete with the back of a shovel. To be able to move it with a tractor, Youngblood put in two old scrap horse shoes. They were slanted to maximize the surface area contact and to diminish the chances of a pig getting its foot caught.

When we were finished, we parked a cow trailor over it to keep the cows from stepping on it before it has a chance to set up. And while we were hooking up the trailor, a dang cow almost stepped on it.

COWS!

G!

George, some friends gave me scraps left over from a flooring project. There is a flexible plastic material that is slightly pebbled on one side and smooth on the other, used for under-layment and available at the big box home store. I just measured it at .055 thick and think it's available in 4X8 sheets like plywood.

Anyway, the point is that this stuff is flexible enough to fashion straight sides for your trough. It cuts with a utility knife or heavy shears so you are limited only by your imagination.

BTW, love the horseshoe handles!

Thank you for sharing George.......love the handles.

The new trough is operational. Youngblood used a chain attached to the draw bar of his tractor to hoist it out of the ground then drag it to the new hog pen. During the trip there, it tolerated, a tremendous amount of what I considered gross abuse. Once there, the chain was detached, the trough was tilted onto its edge and rolled into position. Once there, we filled it with water. Once filled, a four-hogs test ensued and the trough passed with flying colors. I thought it would be very "tippy" but it wasn't. The bottom is relatively flat and that adds a great degree of stability.

I really like the project George. It is what some might call appropriate technology, you use what you have to make what you need. Great job. I can't really say if I would have thought about useing the earth as your form, but it worked like a charm. The finished product looks like it should give you years of service, very strudy, and the hogs can't tip it over easily. A job well done.