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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:
Turning Loose on Sow Housing
Posted in: Production by admin on January 1, 2007 | No Comments
This paper discusses the two most common methods of managing sows in groups, using electronic sow feeders (ESF) and using floor feeding. Other methods using free access stalls, cafeteria system, and biofixation feeding stalls are explored in less detail. Our objective is to assemble a review on each type of housing so that pork producers considering a change will know what challenges await them, and how others have solved problems to achieve excellent results. Electronic sow feeders are a proven method of loose housing of sows, which has been under development over the last twenty plus years, mainly in Europe. It provides a substantial improvement in welfare to the sows under good management, if management pays attention to the details. Productivity figures can be equal to or better than those of stalled units. The system, however, is more labour intensive, and is reliant on complex electronic and mechanical parts, which need to be well protected against a hostile environment, mice in particular. Special care should be taken in choosing an equipment supplier who has adequate technical back up, and spare parts availability. Group pens for housing dry sows have been far less popular than stalls for the past 30 years. However, there have been a number of producers who have used group pens more successfully, than the early experiences in the 60’s and 70’s. There are a number of layouts that can be considered as shown in the several diagrams in this paper. As more producers consider group housing, there will be a lot of consideration given to modifying existing stall barns because it may be possible to modify it economically. The major challenges will be in the details of the existing solid floor as to whether it can easily be smoothed out and the suitability of the slats that are presently in place. The two most popular options, their strengths /weaknesses and the design alterations to improve best management practices have been described in this paper. In addition, the other systems introduced at the beginning would offer additional options, these may be found on the website www.VIDO.org, just following the links to ‘information for producers’.
The stealthy nature of PRRSV infection: The dangers posed by that ever-changing mystery swine disease
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Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) is a member of the genus Arterivirus. The other members are lactate dehydrogenase-elevating virus (LDV) of mice, equine arteritis virus (EAV), and simian hemorrhagic fever virus (SHFV). The arteriviruses as a group exhibit the absolute extremes in mammalian viral pathogenesis. At one end of the spectrum is SHFV, which causes nearly 100% mortality in macaques, with death occurring within 2 weeks of infection. At the other extreme is the infection of mice with LDV, which leads to a life-long asymptomatic infection with levels of viremia approaching 10 million virions per milliliter of blood. These extremes are related to the
different outcomes following the infection of macrophages
Evaluation of uncultivated vegetables for pigs kept in upland households
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Why do pigs root and in what will they root? A review on the exploratory behaviour of pigs in relation to environmental enrichment
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In this paper the effects of different materials on the behaviour of pigs are listed and the preferences of pigs for numerous different materials are compared. It was found that exploratory behaviour in pigs is best stimulated by materials that are complex, changeable, destructible, manipulable, and contain sparsely distributed edible parts.
Throughput and Economics: Challenges of Constipated Barns
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Fungal survival in ensiled swine faeces
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Effects of allometric space allowance and weight group composition on grower-finisher pigs
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Efficient utilization of pen space without adversely affecting the productivity and well-being of pigs is important for pork production. Previous studies on floor space allowance for grower-finisher pigs have been based on production performance (Edwards et al. 1988; Gonyou and Stricklin 1998) without considering other measures of the welfare of pigs. Lack of space may lead to suppression or displacement of one or more activities causing aberrant behaviour and physiological changes leading to poor welfare and economic performance (Petherick 1983). However, how much extra space can be taken away to minimize cost and to ensure efficient space utilization without adversely affecting well-being and production is not yet well understood. Therefore, the space allowance recommended based on conventional space allowance treatments may not be able to ensure both satisfactory levels of production and welfare along with efficient space utilization. Avoiding weight variation at marketing is essential to minimize discounts for pigs (Payne et al. 1999; Brumm et al. 2002). The effect of rearing pigs of unequal weights together on the final weight of pigs and how space allowance can reduce final weight variation are elusive. In this study, it has been hypothesized that the performance and welfare of pigs improve with increasing space allowance. It is also hypothesized that the performance and welfare of pigs improve by allocating pigs of differing body weights to a group rather than allocating pigs of uniform body weight. The average daily gain, pen efficiency and welfare indicators (injury levels, salivary cortisol concentrations and behaviour) of grower-finisher pigs were evaluated in groups of 19 barrows, at four levels of floor space allowances calculated mathematically (area = k × BW0.667) using a constant k, (with values 0.027, 0.031, 0.034, and 0.037) for a mean final market weight of 116 kg and in two levels of group weight composition (uniform and varying weights – based on uniformity and variation of body weights of pigs within a pen at the beginning of the experiment). The corresponding space allowances at the market weight of 116 kg were 0.64, 0.74, 0.81, and 0.88. The data were analyzed using repeated measure ANOVAs and independent sample T tests. The pigs in 0.64 had a lower average daily gain, spent a lower proportion of time lying in preferred areas and had higher total injury scores and higher number of aggressions than those in 0.88 and 0.81. Pigs in 0.64 had higher overall pen efficiency than those in 0.88, 0.81, and 0.74 allowance treatments. Pigs in the varying weight group spent a higher proportion of time lying in preferred areas than the uniform weight group. Pigs in 0.74 and 0.64 spent lower proportion of time lying isolated than pigs in 0.81. The uniform weight group exhibited more exploratory behaviour than the varying weight group. On fully slatted floors, space allotted considering the final market weight of barrows corresponding to k values of 0.037 and 0.034 were better than 0.027 in terms of growth rate and welfare indicators. The results suggest that grouping grower-finishers according to uniformity or variation in body weight may not provide any differential benefit in overall welfare, although a beneficial effect was observed in terms of injury scores, aggression and lying behaviour by increasing space allowance.
How to Keep Pigs Flowing when Space is Limited
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As producers improve their reproductive herd performance with both genetics and management, the number of pigs weaned per litter and per week increases. At the same time, slaughter weights are increasing. Combined, these improvements mean too many pigs in the facility and other issues related to pig flow in facilities become a bigger concern. One option to deal with more weaned pigs is to fill a room at weaning to a fixed capacity, with the excess pigs beginning to fill the next nursery room. The challenge in this is that heating and ventilation systems are not designed for partial room fills. A second challenge to this option is that the number of days available for nursery pig growth decline. This creates tremendous stress on the grow-finish rooms since the pigs are now close to 3 kg (6.6 lb) lighter at placement into these rooms. To make this option work, the producer needs to add at least 1 more nursery and/or finishing room. This comes at a huge price since the number of days pens/rooms are not stocked with pigs increases in the system, adding to the capital expense of production. An option that some producers are using is to modify pig flow by going from a weekly farrowing system to a batch farrowing system. That is, instead of farrowing 30 sows every week, they are farrowing 120 sows once every 4 weeks. They accomplish this by breeding for a 2 week period with a 2 week non-breeding period. This keeps weaning age of pigs within a batch fairly close (within 2 weeks) and allows for a large number of pigs to flow through the system at one time (approximately1100 pigs every 4 weeks). Larger groups of pigs also solve the problems of small pig numbers in one or more rooms since there are larger numbers of pigs available for allocation across a number of rooms. One challenge in this scenario is the limit of 6 weeks of nursery capacity (6 rooms) when farrowing occurs every 4 weeks. The solution is to add 2 nursery rooms so that nursery capacity matches farrowing capacity. There then is 8 weeks of nursery capacity, with the pigs remaining in the nursery for 52 days before relocation to growing-finishing rooms. This often means the pigs are 7+ kg (15+ lb) heavier at placement into the growing-finishing phase of production, which results in more opportunities for the pigs to achieve the desired sale weights prior to the need for the space for the next group of nursery pigs. A second challenge is the altered labor intensity in the breeding/gestation and farrowing facility. With batch farrowing, instead of weekly matings, farrowings, weanings, everything is concentrated in a 2 week period with the other 2 weeks having a relatively light labor demand. With the recent approval for dietary inclusion of ractopamine (Paylean®, Elanco Animal Health, Indianapolis, IN) in finishing diets in Canada, growers in both the US and Canada can now use this product to improve daily gain and carcass lean. While use of Paylean® in late finishing diets will improve pig flow from finishing rooms, it doesn’t solve space issues associated with overcrowding in the nursery. Pig flow problems can become very real as the industrymakes genetic and management progress. While all-in/all-out pig flow is desired for maximizing pig health and minimizing disease transfer between multiple ages of pigs in a production system, the reality is that space becomes a very real limit to performance as productivity increases. Future investments in facilities must include consideration of pig flow options so that improvements in reproductive performance and/or further increases in sale weight can be accommodated more readily than is possible with current fixed flow systems.