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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:
Incorporating Manure Into a Direct Seeding System
Posted in: Environment by admin on January 1, 2003 | No Comments
The main concern, especially with large quantities of fresh solid or liquid manure, is where and when to competently dispose of it. Manure storage, handling and application don’t come without costs, can be a nuisance and can cause environmental problems. If you expect to use the manure as a crop nutrient as well you can run into even more problems. As nutrient loss in manure begins even before it is moved to the field it is hard to know how much nutrient value it actually contains. Depending on the condition of the manure, it may not contain a lot of nutrients, and tilling it into the soil may have little effect. Organic matter is the key to soil quality. Growers who use livestock manure on their fields will likely maintain and improve their soils quality beyond those who continually deplete organic matter through tilling and exporting. There are alternatives to field spreading and incorporating raw manure into the soil. Injection of liquid manure with low disturbance works and composting solid manure or feeding cattle in the field reduces handling. Direct seeding is intended to handle increased crop residue and surface organic matter, as you don’t have to till manure into the soil to reap its benefits. Another alternative is to change spreading habits to allow for less tillage.
Alberta’s new Agricultural Operation Practices Act contains specific requirements for manure management. This means that producers need a good understanding of manure composition and nutrient content and that soil testing, record keeping and application rate restrictions now apply in some cases.
Environmental Benefits of Livestock Manure Management Practices and Technology by Life Cycle Assessment
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An environmentalLife Cycle Assessment (LCA) procedure is constructed to compare the total emissions from different techniques for managing livestock wastes. Life Cycle Assessment is a method of holistically and systematically accounting for the environmental benefits and burdens of the production of goods and services including consequential burdens generated elsewhere. As waste emissions are very variable, the methodology is extended to include the uncertainty in the estimates in order to indicate the significance of differences between techniques. The object is to inform policy of whether options are better for the environment by quantifying potentialemissions abatement, by highlighting priority environmentalimpac ts and by revealing compromises for further investigation.
This paper reports comparative LCAs for severalpig waste management options. For example, various
slurry application techniques, including: splash plates, band spreaders and injection. If the splash-plate system is taken as a reference, the injector system causes only 64% of the environmental acidification and 71% of the eutrophication of surface waters. The benefits must be offset against the increase in nitrate leaching of 50%. In contrast, the band spreader system offers 28% of the benefits of injection. The environmentalimpac ts have also been expressed as a proportion of the UK nationalemissions . This gives each impact a weighted-value that enables direct comparisons of disparate impacts. Although band spreader systems showed an aggregated, or total, environmental impact reduction of almost 10%, the reduction is not significant when uncertainty is taken into account. Using an anaerobic digester shows few overall benefits due to the fugitive losses of methane. However, if these can be eliminated the global warming potential from waste management is reduced close to zero.
Born in Canada and Raised in the USA
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Premium Pork is a farrow to finish system with over 40,000 sows in Canada that finishes all of its commercial hogs in the United States. Reasons for doing this includes cheap feed for finishing hogs in the USA, better packer-producer relationships in the USA, low health status due to low pig density in Canada, decline of the Canadian dollar, and country of origin labeling. Premium Pork has built partners with local farmers, partners with packers, uses Genetiporc genetics (Quebec genetics company), has American grow-finish partners, treats employees well, and has a relationship with several Canadian nutrition companies. Using tight biosecurity regulations, good food safety procedures (such as HACCP), environmentally sound and quality production practices, Premium Pork has grown into the second largest sow herd in Canada.
Effect of social group size on aggressive behaviour of grower-finisher pigs in fully slatted-floor rearing system
Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on | No Comments
The impact of large group size on social behaviour of pigs is poorly understood. A study was conducted to assess the social aggression of grower-finisher pigs in large groups. Pigs with large social group experience displayed behaviour compared to those living in small social groups.
Group Housing: Alternative Systems, Alternative Management
Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on | No Comments
The type of group housing for sows should be selected based on the overall target of the herd. Three options exist for feed control: average feed intake for all sows, equal intake for all individuals, and different amounts to different animals. Floor feeding, the most basic form of group housing, has issues with aggression and can only really see an appropriate average intake. These problems can be reduced (but not eliminated) by increasing space allowance and putting skinny sows into separate groups. A trickle system can provide a relatively even distribution of feed. Sows enter small individual stalls while feed is trickled down at an appropriate rate. Individual confinement is the only way to control individual feed intake. This is possible with stalls that lock the sow in and electronically controlled gates to allow different groups access to the feeding stalls at different times of the day. Electronic sow feeders are an alternative that electronically monitors how much a sow eats in a feeding area. This amount is reset daily, which allows for a daily allotment of feed for each sow. Social management of sows considers frequency of regrouping, sorting, and group size. A static group of sows are grouped once and only once during gestation while a dynamic group adds new animals on several occasions. Dynamic grouping could be detrimental to the sows welfare and productivity. One of the main benefits of group housing is the ability of the sow to manage its own comfort. Fairly rapid estrus detection can be achieved by bringing a boar to a pen adjacent to the group for a short period each day. If several animals need breeding they can be penned in stalls for a short time. Research done at the Prairie Swine Centre show that there was only a 2% difference in productivity between a static group, dynamic group, and conventional gestation stalls.
Weaner Problems in Danish Pig Production
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Due to Denmark’s removal of large amounts of zinc and growth promotants from diets, diarrhea has become a big problem from E. coli. This can cause death in 5 to 8 days after weaning, often with diarrhea not even being seen. Age, weight at weaning, hygiene, climate conditions, feeding strategy, feed formulation, feeding conditions, water supply and density among the pigs are all important factors to take into consideration when dealing with E. coli diarrhea.
Lawsonia diarrhea causes grayish diarrhea, a reduction in weight gain, and usually begins at 3 weeks post-weaning. Proper feed formulation and very good hygiene practice are both helpful in preventing this disease.
Denmark has also seen PRRS and PMWS/Circovirus.
Transferring results of behavioral research to industry to improve animal welfare on the farm, ranch and the slaughter plant.
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Aversive handling procedures regularly affect animal production in a negative way, whether it is through decreased gains, decreased milk production, increased presence of illness, etc. Good handling equipment aids in good production, but stockman attitude towards animals is equally essential. In the past, animal handling, transport, and stunning methods have been successfully transferred to the industry. However, there must be careful attention to detail when constructing new equipment in order to improve animal welfare. Construction of new equipment should be based on the scientific specifications rather than cost benefits to the contractor or producer, and construction should be supervised by the scientist when possible to ensure it is being carried out properly. Scientists who come up with ideas for new technologies must be able to communicate their ideas in a clear and concise manner to the industry and public, using layman’s terms and avoiding scientific jargon. Communication is best carried out through speaking at conferences and public events, through websites, and through publishing of research in magazines and scientific journals. Consultation with producers on how to implement new procedures and technology should be readily available. In order to maintain excellent stockmanship and animal handling, it is essential to have the appropriate number of staff for the workload at hand. Financial penalties could then be implemented relating to the number of injuries animals have, or the drop in production an operation may have compared to the industry average. Speed should not be rewarded when it comes to the handling and processing of animals. Provision of economic benefits relating to improvements in animal productivity and reduction in injuries would provide more incentive for the industry to adopt welfare friendly methods of production. Implementing standards such as scoring systems to compare animal handling techniques to set welfare standards would benefit producers as well. For example, paying attention to the number of animal vocalizations at slaughter would give the processor an idea of where to improve their methods, since vocalizations are often related to aversive events such as bad handling, equipment problems, bad flooring, etc. Welfare legislations and requirements that are specified by large customers (such as restaurants and supermarkets) provide powerful motivation and economic incentive to the industry to use behavioral methods of production. Such customers keep up frequent audits in which they regularly score their supplier’s operations and set standards. If a supplier fails an audit, they are suspended from the supplier list, or removed from the list altogether. Overall, scientists need to take more initiative to get their research results adopted by the industry.