Winter 2004 - This image shows the animal shed in the Winter corral. In the winter the animals spend a lot of time in the corral once the snows become too much for grazing on the pastures. They still go out at times to browse on brush but their main diet is hay. Hay serves four functions. The first is feed, of course. The pigs also bed in the hay, completely disappearing at night below a blanket of hay they fluff up. This keeps them warm even in our extreme temperatures. Third, and very important in our cold windy climate, the hay is setup as walls around the pole shed shown providing a wind break. Outside the shed it can be -40 with 70mph but inside the shelter of the shed it will be much more comfortable. Lastly, the hay mixes with the animal manure in the corral making for an excellent mulch for when the corral once again becomes our garden in the Spring after the pigs till it up. An important factor is that we let the bedding inside the shed building up to form a deep, warm soft pack. This undergoes a composting action producing heat. The same is true in the bird's hay bale coop.

Of course, being pigs, even the wooly sheepy type, they would eat themselves out of house and home if we didn't stop them from eating the walls which are needed for blocking the wind. We use a combination of:
- Boards and woven wire - inside the sleeping area in the shed
- Electric fencing - away from the sleeping animals up high in the shed and around the outside and the additional hay (#5).
This is primarily a matter of convience and what we have on hand.

Hay areas 1 and 2 provide most of the wind block as our wind comes almost totally from the Northwest. These sections won't get fed until Spring when the extreme cold and wind is nolonger an issue. The exception is if it is nasty out and I must get a bale I may toss in the end one from section 1 and then replace it with one from section 5 when the weather is nicer. These little details can make life a lot more pleasant when the weather takes a turn for the worst. Section 3, inside the shed gets eaten first freeing up more space as the weather gets colder. Then section 5 is fed during the depth winter. Section 5 has a tarp on the north side as that is where our precipitation comes from. This will make getting bales out easier later in the winter. There is also some scrap wood on top for a snow roof. It is not absolutely necessary since there is no rain but it makes it more pleasant to get at the hay after the snow gets deep. The sleeping section actually was partially filled with hay in the beginning but we fed that out first before the weather got bad. Section 4 will be fed as we move into late winter, getting more sun and less severe wind.

I usually toss one or two bales in at a time but also I find that the animals are pretty good about self feeding when things are divided up into sections like this. If necessary I can simply open a section and let them work into it from the end. They don't have the opportunity to move on to anything else so they clean it all up. It may be that having the mix of pigs and sheep makes this even more effective. I have heard some people warn against mixing them when the pigs get larger or are males - all of ours are sows. Rather amusingly, our ram gets rather amorous with the sows, much to their displeasure!

In a warmer, moister climate mold could be a problem if the hay is not well covered. But due to our cold this isn't an issue for us and the hay stays fresh. We do place it up off the ground on a combination of rocks, tires, the half wall and pallets since our ground does not freeze much due to our early and deep snows.

The shed is oriented so that it gets the warmth of the sun and the wind is blocked. The water for the corral is just a little ways outside the shed along the fence line. It is a 50 gallon barrel that is fed by the overflow from our spring up above the pastures. This flows continuously and stays open except in the most extreme cold when I sometimes have to break a little ice in the morning. Once Winter snows set in the sheep tend to eat snow rather than drink water but the pigs, ducks and chickens all appreciate the ground warmed water.

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