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Monday, March 04, 2013

Tools of the Trade :: The Hydraulic Hog Cart

I have one question for you ... Can you think of anything more cool than a six foot by fourteen foot hog pen on a platform that you can pull around with your tractor and make it lift from ground level up about four feet or so (commonly known in the agricultural world as a hydraulic hog cart)? Actually, now that I read that it really doesn't sound that cool, but it really something that I'm pretty excited about. In fact I would almost go as far as to say that it is a tool that I wouldn't farm without on a small woodlot based pig farm like mine.

For approximately the past nine months I have been "borrowing" a hog cart from a good friend ... if you can call having it for that long "borrowing"! I've actually spent some time searching for one of my own, but never found one that was in decent shape and still in my price range. Last Friday though I thought I would try another "wanted to buy" ad on Craigslist and this time I actually had over five responses that were all relatively close to the farm. I was VERY glad to find this one in good shape and I'm sure my friend is glad to have his back (it was very, very, very helpful of him to loan it to me).

This is such a helpful piece of equipment because I move and load pigs fairly often and most of the time  I'm loading them out of a large paddock of woods and pasture, so anything I can do it make it easier I do. The other reason these hydraulic carts are so great is that they drop all of the way to the ground ... in general pigs like to keep their nose to the ground and are not big fans of stepping up so having the cart on the ground makes it easy peasy!

It's just one of those things that makes life on the farm just that much more enjoyable ...

6 comments:

  1. Interesting. I had never heard of that. We have something like that though. We have a large crate, about 4'x4'x4' with a small entry door on the ground and a roof that opens up. We built this to go on our tractor's front fork lift so we can lift it from ground level up to 9' up although I don't think we've ever lifted it that high with pigs in it. It docks with a pen or can be set in over the fence by the tractor. We open the little side door, herd piglets, weaners, shoats or growers in, close the door and away we go. Very handy.

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  2. That sounds like a handy crate. What I like about this one is that it has a center dividing gate so I can sort pigs in it or load a large group without having to worry about them coming back out.

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  3. My gosh, I have never even heard of such a thing, and it's sounds so HELPFUL!

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  4. Congratulations. Nothing like having the right equipment for the job.

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  5. Congratulations! Nothing like having the right equipment for the job.

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  6. I built one that goes on the back of the tractor, using the 3 point hitch.

    Version 1:
    http://ebeyfarm.blogspot.com/2009/10/pig-carrier-for-tractor.html

    Version 2
    http://ebeyfarm.blogspot.com/2010/02/pig-carrier-version-2.html

    Version 2 in use
    http://ebeyfarm.blogspot.com/2010/03/using-pig-carrier-farrowing-crates.html

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