Sty
enclosure for pigs
A sty or pigsty is a small-scale outdoor enclosure for raising domestic pigs as livestock. Pigsties are generally fenced areas of bare dirt and/or mud. There are several reasons that pigs, generally clean animals, create such a living environment:
Pigs are voracious eaters and will eat all the plants in the enclosure until there is nothing left to control erosion.
The pig will naturally root and dig for food in the enclosure, further disturbing the soil.
Pigs do not regulate temperature by sweating which means that they must be provided with water or mud in which they can control their own body temperature.
A large-scale enclosure for raising pigs is generally called a hog lot. Unlike a sty which would be found on a mixed farm, a hog lot is usually a dedicated facility. A locked enclosure with confined/restricted movement and freedom to exercise, is known as a boar-stall.
According to some experts such forced immobilization was believed to elevate cortisol.
Terminology
It is sometimes referred to as a hog pen, hog parlor, pigpen, pig parlor, or pig-cote, although pig pen may refer to pens confining pigs that are kept as pets as well.
The public source identifies “Sty” as enclosure for pigs. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around enclosure and pigs.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1651566. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sty” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.