If its first year of operation is any indication, The Prairie Swine Centre\u2019s Pork Interpretive Gallery (P.I.G.) is well on its way to building a well-deserved reputation as a valuable teaching tool for Saskatchewan educators. Located at the Prairie Swine Centre\u2019s Elstow Research Facility, a 600-sow farrow-to-finish hog operation, the Pork Interpretive Gallery allows tour participants unprecedented access to an intensive hog operation. This access is made available through a unique viewing gallery that \u2018bypasses\u2019 biosecurity concerns at the barn.<\/p>\n
In fact biosecurity is not compromised, but rather, the viewing gallery is accessed through a separate, outside entrance that leads up a flight of stairs to what would normally be the barn\u2019s attic. But thanks to a stroke of genius and a few structural modifications, the attic became a segregated viewing gallery, aptly known as the P.I.G.
\nGeared towards students from the Grade 5 to Grade 9 level, the tour has some very eye-catching and interactive signage to captivate the students\u2019 attention, and is guided by knowledgeable and friendly interpreters.<\/p>\n
\u201cHats off to the interpreters, they were amazing,\u201d says Leslie Sichello, a Grade 5 teacher at Silverwood Heights Elementary School in Saskatoon. \u201cThey were so patient and they provided all of the answers that the kids wanted to know. They were able to anticipate what kids of things would really capture a Grade 5\u2019s brain.\u201d
\nKandace Chopty, a Grade 5 teacher at Watrous Elementary School was so impressed with her first visit to P.I.G., she made a return trip this past school year. \u201cThe kids learned some new things about the pork industry,\u201d Chopty says. \u201cEven though they are rural children, there was still stuff there that they learned.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess this year the highlight was of course we saw the pigs being born. They were right there, noses pressed to the glass, observing it,\u201d she chuckles. \u201cOf course they didn\u2019t want to leave that area, that was by far the highlight of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regardless if the touring students come from an urban or rural setting, the P.I.G. tour seems to provide a valuable learning experience for any and all students. \u201cNone of our students were from a farm background so it was very new to them,\u201d said Cliff Adelman, an Agriculture 20 teacher at Lutheran Collegiate Bible Institute (LCBI) in Outlook. \u201cThey loved it,\u201d \u201cIt very much changed their perception,\u201d he adds. \u201cThey now know when they eat pork what kind of a place it comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA student from Toronto thanked me especially for it, he said \u2018I know where my food comes from now, I never really thought about it before.\u2019 So it\u2019s excellent.\u201d Despite targeting its message largely to grade school students, the P.I.G. tour is also adaptable enough to be beneficial to university veterinary medical students, says U of S vet med professor Joe Stookey. \u201cAll of the responses back from the students was excellent,\u201d says Stookey, who took out 70 second-year veterinary students as part of their introduction to swine production. \u201cAnd in fact I\u2019ve had requests from other years wanting to do the same thing. Some classes felt they missed out on it.\u201d \u201cAnd the interpreters were great,\u201d Stookey adds, concurring with Sichello\u2019s earlier comments. \u201cWe had some pretty sophisticated questions, I would guess compared to grade school or high school questions, and there wasn\u2019t anything that went unanswered.\u201d
\nNot only is the actual tour a delight for teachers, but the P.I.G. is beneficial to teachers even before the field trip begins, says Sichello.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe documents that they sent out ahead of time that had everything connected to curricular objectives was very well planned as well,\u201d she says. \u201cThey knew exactly what this would connect to in health and lifestyles.\u201d
\n\u201cSo the kids were prepared and they just loved it,\u201d Sichello says, adding that the P.I.G. tour was her best field trip of the year. \u201cIt was really good.\u201d For more information on or to book your tour with the Pork Interpretive Gallery, please call P.I.G. Tour manager, Deb Ehmann-PIG-TOUR (1-866-744-8687), or visit www.PIGTour.ca<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If its first year of operation is any indication, The Prairie Swine Centre\u2019s Pork Interpretive Gallery (P.I.G.) is well on its way to building a well-deserved reputation as a valuable teaching tool for Saskatchewan educators. Located at the Prairie Swine Centre\u2019s Elstow Research Facility, a 600-sow farrow-to-finish hog operation, the Pork Interpretive Gallery allows tour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[931],"tags":[4685,8882,10033,13816,1060,4906,12251,2817,19644,286,2323,2917,5886,20007,111,10831,34,9053,5381,4139,79,14,33,16262,1324,2608,14068,10464,22626,27283,17743,27282,23760,1240,1665,14980,22921,20912,104,35,13703,1131,20911,5113,2204,22441],"class_list":["post-3161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prairie-swine-centre","tag-access","tag-al","tag-arc","tag-ass","tag-barn","tag-biosecurity","tag-born","tag-cla","tag-dd","tag-dust","tag-elstow","tag-engineering","tag-farrow","tag-gh","tag-health","tag-hello","tag-hog","tag-leg","tag-light","tag-manager","tag-nutrition","tag-pig","tag-pigs","tag-pl","tag-pork","tag-pork-industry","tag-pork-interpretive-gallery","tag-prairie-swine","tag-prairie-swine-centr","tag-prairie-swine-centre","tag-prod","tag-production","tag-professor","tag-research","tag-saskatchewan","tag-search","tag-segregated","tag-some","tag-sow","tag-swine","tag-swine-centre","tag-swine-production","tag-t","tag-technology-adoption","tag-technology-transfer","tag-tour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}