SEARCH
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:
Group Sow Housing Across Canada: What Have We Seen
Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Prairie Swine Centre, Production, Swine Innovation by student on July 25, 2018
Author: Doug Richards and Dr. Jennifer Brown
Summary:
This project had Doug Richard and Dr. Jennifer Brown traveling across the country to visit and tour barns with producers that had group sow houses or were going to put it in.
The following is a brief tour of what they saw:
New Brunswick: 1200 sow operation, since 2004. Saw the benefits of genetic selection over 12 years, well oiled machines. Benefit of culling for genetics. Has a shower unit.
Quebec: 850 sow operation, solid bedrooms with partitions. Renovation. Has solid floors in the middle.
Quebec: 600 sow. Renovation. Utilized Gestal operation.
Ontario: 1400 sow operation, new build, each pen has 17-18 sows. Has to go off of parity and size, “gilts in their first parity cause a lot of problems”. This was the only competitive feeding system. There are not partitions. Feed in the morning.
Ontario: 650 sow operation. Renovation. Fully slated barn.
Ontario: 1800 sow. Partitions, sows like to have something against their back and their side.
Ontario: 220 sow.
Ontario: 100 sow Organic, 23 pigs per pen. Allows the pigs outside. Farrowing crate is 81 sq feet and only closed for four hours.
Manitoba: 3000 sow operation. Never loss production. Rented another bar. Then once the one side was completed they moved the sows from the one side to the other and started construction on the other half. The sows that were send out to the rented barn where not brought back to the property they were culled.
Manitoba: 650 operation. Put in a training unit. This is one thing that was lacking in most of the systems.
Saskatchewan: 600 sow operation. The gilt barn is totally slatted, sow barn has some solids.
Alberta: 275 sow, conversion. Have to work with the manufacturer to see what you can do.
Takes different staff training to work with these animals as they do not respond the same way that stall housed sows do.