The pig project - pig ark construction

how we built our pig ark

You can get pig arks ready-made and there's nothing wrong with that, indeed they look very good, but they are a bit pricey and so we decided have a go at building our own. We looked at the designs of ones on the market and a few we'd seen on the net, and then came up with our own plan.

step one - go shopping

our shopping list:

• solid ply wood base
• solid wood sides
• batons for base struts
• batons for side stuts
• felt for the roof
• nails to hold it all together
• some helpful family and a few power tools

However when Sam and Bryan came back from the timber merchants, the £35 price tag on each sheet of ply had made them rethink what was needed for the side panels, and so they got two fence panels instead. The fences are pre-treated, the perfect size and a lot cheaper.

step two - make your base

The base needs to be solid - our two pigs are going to get pretty heavy. It also needs to sit off the floor to let air circulate underneth it. (This will stop it getting damp and will help keep it warm - air insulates, cold wet ground doesn't.) So the first job was to cut the base to size and then attach wooden batons around the edges and across the width.

Our plywood sheet was 2.44m long by 1.22m wide. We cut the length down so it matched the fence sheets, then cut 2 long batons to go along the edge and 5 to go along each end and to brace it across the middle. We nailed all the batons together and then nailed the frame you can see below onto the ply.

We then had an interesting combined maths and woodwork lesson. First up some basic trigonometry to work out what angle to cut the side batons to, so that when the fence panels were fixed to them at the base, they would meet at the top and not leave any gaps anywhere. As we all know - or as a few of us knew and a few needed a bit of gentle reminding! - if you have a triangle the three inside angles add up to 180°. So, in an equalateral triangle like ours, measure the top angle (50° in our case) minus that from 180° (leaving 130°) then divide by two (that makes 65°), will give you the inside angles of the two bottom angles.

Then over to the woodwork bench to fix the circular saw to cut the batons lengthways to that angle. You could of course do this by hand, but it might take you while.

The batons just went along the longer sides of the base, sitting on top of the plywood with the 65° angles ready to lean the fence panels against.

step three - put the sides on

Before putting the sides on we carried the base into the pig area, as it would have been too big to get through the fence with sides intact.

With the batons in place, we had a couple of people to hold a fence panel in place and one person who's skilled with a hammer - go Bryan - to nail them on.

We then used the rest of the left-over ply (plus a bit Bryan already had) to cover the back end. No maths needed here, just hold ply against end, draw line where it meets the fence panel, cut along lines, nail in place.

step four - put your pigs in!

We got some bags of stuff called 'equine easi bed' which is tiny wood chips that are soft-edged and keep the bedding dry and airy. So we chucked a load of that all over the base, and then a bag of straw on top. Snuggly. The pigs didn't need a lot of encouragement to go in and snuggle down, and after their first night in their new bijou residence, they were warm, dry and oinking in what we think is a contented manner.

step five - roof and ends

This is how our pigs spent their first night, but we knew we had to make some improvements. Our pig area is in a very shelterd spot, surrounded by trees, so they were quite warm, but the ark needs to stand up to full winter gales and storms.

As a temporary solution to stop the Cumbrian rain getting in, we covered the whole thing in a big plastic tarpaulin sheet. We now need to get a few bales of straw to use as bedding inside and keep the spare ones leaning against the entrance to provide more shelter.