Welcome to the Pighuts.co.uk 2010 Blog
01/02/10 - Today I had some advice about how to generate more traffic to our website. Apparently, the more links you have from other websites, the higher up the google search rankings you will be. To this end we are offering any pig or smallholder related site £5 in cash or £10 off a hut for adding a link to our site. Check out the 'Special Offers' section of the site.
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25/01/10 - A quiet time of the year with just the odd order going out. We have just got some tidy uninsulated huts in which are now on the website. They work out a bit cheaper than the insulated ones and are also lighter so are easier to move if that is required.
It is probably something of an understatement to say that it has not been a great winter to have pigs outside, if it is not raining, it is freezing cold and snowing. Pipes are freezing up and even bursting or there is mud everywhere and generally everything seems to take twice as long as usual to do. I had a few winters that were similar although not quite as bad as this one and it is certainly one aspect of pig keeping that I do not miss. Thankfully, all our fatteners went just before Christmas so we have none around at the moment. We slightly overdid the numbers in the Autumn so our partners in the farmers market business have plenty in the cold store to keep them going for these first few months of the year. Selling value-added items such as bacon, pies and sausages helps ease out various fluctuations which you cannot do with just selling fresh pork. In any case, due to the terrible weather and the economy generally, trade is not great.
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26/11/09 - We have had the usual Autumn rush of orders although this year it has worked out quite nicely as we have been able to keep on top of the orders and get the arks ready for collection or delivery without customers having to wait too long as they have in other years. It has helped that we have had a steady flow of orders pretty much all Autumn rather than a single super hectic period just when the weather turns more miserable. We have just taken on a friend as a part-time delivery person which will also ease the burden.
A quick tip if buying pigs at a farm sale as told by a customer who we delivered to last week. He was bidding on a group of strong weaners. The previous lots had all been sold on the basis of one price for the whole batch and he assumed that this was the way all lots would be sold. He was convinced that he had got a bargain when he bought a group of six pigs for £48 but had a bit of a shock when he was told that £48 was the price per head! He wasn't unduly bothered but I'm sure he might just ask the question next time!
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05/10/09 - Lorry loads of huts are like buses, you don't get any for months and then two come along at once! One of our sourcers that we use has found a lot of huts deep in the eastern counties somewhere. Fortunately, they are not all the same so we are offering one sort as they are without any refurbishment and doing our usual repair work on the second lot. This gives customers more choice with price, condition and types which means in turn we sell more huts, a win-win situation if there ever was one!
Good news for all pig keepers, feed prices are on their way down according to a friend of mine who sells it. Although cereal farmers are complaining about the poor prices they are getting for their corn, these same low prices are now starting to feed through to feed prices. The feed that we buy has just dropped by £10 a tonne which is a welcome bonus especially as the pig price is still reasonably good.
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13/09/09 - Long time, no blog! We have had a manic busy summer which I am sure we should be grateful for in these tough times. Our main business of wheelie bin cleaning has been busier than ever and whenever we have had a 'spare' minute, it has soon been used up mending or delivering huts. Throw in a few weddings, a weeks holiday in France and a biggish party for my 40th birthday and the summer has been and gone.
We are currently almost sold out of everything, the 'clearance bargains' are the only huts we have any number of. I got a bit greedy with these as they were really popular earlier in the year at a price around £30-50 depending on quality. I put the price up a bit to £70, enquiries dried up and lesson learnt, I have reduced them back down to £45. Hopefully, they will now sell again. We have another lorry load of half round huts coming in this week so stocks will be replenished. At the moment we even have orders for huts we have not yet got which has never happened before. The next two months are usually the busiest of the year. People who have got away with somewhat sub-standard accomodation in the warmer summer months suddenly realise that they need something better to get them through the winter.
Back garden pig keeping seems to be the new 'must-do' hobby for this year. Country Life magazine recently had a pig keeping supplement and it was widely reported in the media that B&Q were about to start stocking pig arks. I was persuaded by a smooth talking telesales girl to advertise in the Country Life supplement. Not one of my better decisions as I don't think it has yielded one enquiry, perhaps there are less people going into it than we are all led to believe!
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07/07/09 - The 'Clearance Bargain' huts are back! Due to their previous popularity, we have put some of the latest consignment that we have taken delivery of straight onto the website. These huts are not refurbished at all but are in reasonable condition and will provide a low cost solution to housing your pigs. This weekend we have a repeat order to deliver four huts to the celebrity chef Phil Vickery. He had one hut a couple of years ago but is now using some woodland to expand his rare-breed herd. He is a really nice bloke and very passionate about his food and thanks to Aldi should be good for the money!!
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15/06/09 - As of this weekend, we have now sold out of all our 'Clearance Bargain' huts. These sold really well, reflecting the current difficult times I imagine although because they are so cheap they are not so profitable for us! We will be getting some more stock in soon of various shapes, sizes and qualities so there should be something for everyone.
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25/04/09 - I managed to combine a delivery of arks to Alton in Hampshire with a friend's stag day/night in Bournemouth. These combined trips usually work really well as they save time and fuel. This one turned out to be a bit of a disaster. A month ago, I bought a brand new Ford Ranger pick-up which I use to do deliveries. When trying to connect my trailer to it, the hitch didn't attach properly and it rolled forward and smashed the rear light unit and put a big dent in the back corner. Great start, although the brake, side and indicator lights still more or less worked. Setting off an hour late and running on a very tight schedule to get to paintballing at Bournemouth in time, a rattling noise started developing as I was going down the A34. Once I could find somewhere safe to pull over, I found that two of the four bolts holding the towbar of the pick-up onto the chassis had fallen out. Some muppet had not done them up properly when it was fitted. Fortunately the AA came out really quickly, had a bolt that fitted and I could continue although I did eventually turn up for the paintballing two hours late!
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20/04/09 - I delivered two weaners for my children's primary school for the mini farm that the Headmaster has set up. This is the second year I have done this. It is supposed to be an educational resource so the children know where their food comes from which is obviously a good idea. However it is not entirely coincidental that the pigs end up in the Headmaster's freezer! Last year I sourced him two British Saddlebacks from a local rare breed producer. However, in common with a lot of people who eat rare breed meat, he found it tasted great but was over-fatty although I don't think it helped that he overfed the pigs which always means they are fattier. This year we decided to try a more commercial type pig which have been bred to be much leaner. A friend of mine has a good sized commercial unit and he has a number of hybrid boars which occasionally produce coloured pigs. We picked out a male and female, one ginger, one with black and white spots and I duly delivered them to the pen that is tucked away outside some outlying classrooms. Job done, or so I thought, the next morning my phone rang and it was the Headmaster who had been receiving complaints from various teachers of the younger children. They were getting a lot of questions along the lines of 'why is that pig jumping on the other one' and 'what is that hanging from underneath that one'. He was quite embarassed and said he knew the pigs were only doing what comes naturally but thought on balance that it would be better if I could remove the boar and swap him for another female!
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05/04/09 - A busy few days refurbishing huts for a rush of orders we have had in. In these difficult economic times, I'm sure our prices and quality are helping to drive business our way rather than the more expensive new-build suppliers.
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01/04/09 - Website now back up and running after a myriad of technical problems - give me a pig hut to repair any day! The weather has taken a spring like turn so now the world can see us again, we are hoping for some more orders as this time of the year is usually pretty busy. We find customers want to renew or upgrade their housing after a long, hard winter as well as the usual people wanting to get into pig-keeping for the first time.
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08/02/09 - Whilst researching all the different manufacturers of huts for the 'useful links' section, I noticed that practically all of the manufacturers who sell specifically to the smallholder sector put a floor in their arcs and make a big feature of it in their marketing whereas the manufacturers selling to commercial pig farmers do not.
Why is this? Because we source from commercial farms, we rarely sell huts with floors and there are several reasons why they do not use floors. Firstly, due to the numbers involved, commercial herds MUST be sited on land of the correct soil type. It is essential that it is free draining so water drains away quickly and the whole site does not degenerate into a mudbath in winter. Having had experience of sites on less than ideal land, men and machines soon become bogged down in a sea of mud, the land becomes rutted and there can certainly be welfare issues for the pigs. This is the reason that outdoor pig keeping tends to be concentrated in areas such as East Anglia where conditions are suitable. If units are sited on the correct land, most of the reasons for having floors do not apply. The beds do not get damp as water drains away even in the most prolonged wet period and, as the pigs should be bedded with plenty of straw anyway, they should be laying on that not the floor. Secondly, floors make the huts heavy and difficult to clean out. I appreciate some designs have removable floors which will help, but the simplest and easiest way to freshen up the bed is to move the hut to a new area in your paddock with fresh straw and leave the old one where it is. It certainly helps disease build-up, I used to burn the old beds to aid this process and spray the inside of the huts with disinfectant every time I moved them. With arks with floors, this is far more labourious.
In fairness to the manufacturers selling huts with floors, they would not do it if there was no demand. In some people's understandable eagerness to become pig keepers, they sometimes do not think clearly enough about whether they have a big enough area for the pigs or have the right land. In the warmer months, when everything dries out quicker, the pigs will be fine but in winter they will be problems. Floors will help inside the hut but do nothing about the sea of mud around the ark which the pigs need to go through to get to their food and water. It is not fair on the pigs and in these instances people would perhaps be better off fattening some pigs over the Spring, Summer and early Autumn and giving themselves and their land a break in the colder, wetter months. A good rule of thumb to remember regarding stocking densities is to have 6-8 sows or equivalent per acre.
Floors obviously also add to the cost of setting up your unit. With our huts, if customers are absolutely adamant that they must have a floor, I recommend them putting a sheet of 8 feet by 4 feet plywood under the arc. This should cost no more than £20 and works just a well as an integrated floor.
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05/02/09 - New version of the website is finally up and running. Many thanks must go to our very helpful neighbour, Ben Heaton of seeddirect.co.uk who has done a tremendous amount of work to re-vamp the site.
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01/02/09 - Early Sunday morning delivery to Ardeley near Stevenage today. The pigs were in a small paddock in the middle of a very picturesque village where usually there would be a cricket square or a childrens' play area. Rather than the usual signs saying 'DO NOT FEED THE PIGS' they were encouraging people to do just that by providing small bags of pig nuts. They also had a small, old fashioned market stall with eggs, an honesty box and loads of information about all their local produce. They are passionate about what they are doing and it would make an interesting place to visit if you are looking to do a similar thing.
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26/01/09 - Purchased some more huts today from yet another commercial pig producer forced out of production by poor prices, high costs and over regulation. Sadly he had sold a lot of his equipment already so I was left with some of the more 'tired' items. Nonetheless there are still 21 more of the ever-popular half round arks and 17 of the kennel type which customers have always liked whenever we have had them. Once our haulier gets them back here, there will be no shortage of work in the next few weeks to get them ready for the normal Spring rush!
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