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Industry Partners
Prairie Swine Centre is an affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan
Prairie Swine Centre is grateful for the assistance of the George Morris Centre in developing the economics portion of Pork Insight.
Financial support for the Enterprise Model Project and Pork Insight has been provided by:
Achieving High Productivity in Group Housed Sows -Banff 2016
Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Production by admin on May 3, 2017
Problems associated with group housing and how to confront them:
Inaccurate feeding: Meeting the needs of individual sows dietary requirements is challenging in a group housing system but using and electronic sow feeder system producers can closely monitor weights and provide tailored specific rations for their sows.
Social stress: Sows can remember pecking orders of up to 100 pigs so maintaining a group larger than that alleviates some of the stress and energy that goes into maintaining a dominance hierarchy. Making it difficult for sows to go from the front of the ESF to the back by introducing a raceway system prevents sows from rushing each other out to access the remains of the last pig. As does keeping the number of sows per ESF on the lower end of the range around 45. As for space allotment Coleman found that 23-24 square feet per sow was a happy medium that worked for both the producer and the animals.
Training difficulties: Training sows on the ESF system earlier seemed to mitigate stress and confusion, starting at ten weeks of age versus starting at heat detection which is currently standard practice.
Achieving High Productivity in Group Housed Sows -Banff 2016