Description

Our first phase of restoring this Tennessee property was to provide enough adequate and safe housing for the 159 pigs who were surrendered to us. The second phase was to create awnings on those houses. We’re now insulating and paneling all the houses to help them stay cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. This project also ensures we will have a much easier time with the daunting seasonal task of cleaning all the pig houses!

Insulating the houses involves spray foam or rigid foam insulation, depending on the style. We then panel the house with pine shiplap sourced from a small local supplier.

Funding

This has been an expensive project to undertake this year while we have also been improving the infrastructure for our animal caregivers with the construction of the “Cantina.” It has cost approximately $3500 per pig house, and we still have several to complete. A majority of the labor has been skilled volunteer labor, which is an enormous savings on the project!

Challenges

The main challenge with this project has been trying to work quickly during the summer months. We temporarily relocate our pig residents one home at a time for these renovations and work diligently to complete the upgrades so that they can return to their insulated homes as quickly as possible.

The logistics of planning this project, considering the weather, utilizing volunteer manpower to minimize expense, and sourcing wood products from small local dealers have made it a very labor-intensive process. We still need quite a bit of funding to complete all of the pig houses, and we prioritized the houses with the smallest and oldest pigs having their insulation completed first.