Transitioning to Loose Sow Housing

Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Prairie Swine Centre, Production, Swine Innovation by student on July 25, 2018 | No Comments

Author: John Van Engelen

Summary:

John Van Engelen describes the phases of his conversion for stall housing to group housing for sows.

New Hand at the Helm of Prairie Swine Centre

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Author: Sheri Monk

Reference: Canadian Hog Journal Summer 2018

Summary: Prairie Swine Centre is known for its relationship with producers and the practical approach it takes towards academic research. Over the past 25 years Prairie Swine Centre has been an asset to the swine industry. Late last year CEO Lee Whittington announced that he would be retiring, the new CEO to be appointed was announced early this year as Dr. Murray Pettitt.

Dr. Pettitt is no stranger to Prairie Swine Centre, although this position will be new to him. The position attracted Dr. Pettitt as he believes in practical research. He believes in the mandate of Prairie Swine Centre and that they are providing value to the producers along with other members of the pork value chain.

As of yet Dr. Pettitt has spend a considerable amount of time with the outgoing CEO, Lee Whittington learning the ropes and renewing friendships and working relationships. He has been in information gathering mode so that he can learn everything he can regarding the business and how it works. The production side is something that Pettitt has to take on as well, as a portion of the income of Prairie Swine Centre is due to the sale of market animals.

New Hand at the Helm of the Prairie Swine Centre

Commercial Scale Research By Gowans Feeding Consulting

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Author: Gowans Feed Consulting

Reference: Canadian Hog Journal Summer 2018

Summary: Research in commercial conditions can aid producers in improving performance, reducing production costs, and increasing net returns by focusing on the utilization of different feed ingredients, different feed additives and different feeding strategies.

University or research setting generally utilize animals of higher health status, smaller pen sizes, and lower stocking density giving different results than that of a commercial operation. Gowans feed consulting is a research company that employs research into the commercial setting. The barns have the ability to conduct research from weaning to slaughter.

Lewisville Nursery Research Barn: A 1,400 commercial research nursery barn established in 2016. It has two rooms, each being able to accommodate 700 pigs. The facility is divided into 50 test pens that can each hold 28 pigs.

Drumloche Grow-Finish Research Barn: This 2,100 grow-finisher facility was established in 2005. The facility is divided into two rooms of 50 pens. There are two pens in each room that are utilized for injured or treated pigs.

Commercial Scale Research by Gowans Feed Consulting

Ten-Year-Old Field Study Yields Wealth of Information on Manure Management

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Author: Christine Rawluk, National Centre for Livestock and Environment, University of Manitoba

Reference: Canadian Hog Journal Summer 2018

Summary: In 2007, the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment (NCLE) Long Term Field Laboratory was developed with the initial question: ” what happens to nitrogen availability and soil phosphorous levels over time when manure is applied either annually, at rates to meet crop N requirements, or intermittently, at rates to match crop P removal for several year?”

Since then, other questions have been asked such as:

• “What is the capacity of the soil to continue to provide nitrogen if manure applications stop?”
• “How does suspending manure application impact drawdown of soil test phosphorus levels?”

The field laboratory is composed of 96 plots that are under an annual cropping system or a perennial forage-based cropping system. The plots were treated with either an intermittent or annual application of liquid pig, solid pig and solid dairy manures as well as synthetic fertilizer. The control plots were treated with no fertilizer.

From this study the key findings regarding N have been:

• Crop growth is enhanced by the readily available nitrogen in liquid pig manure
• Annual manure addition over an eight year time frame created a soil reserve of N that can be utilized by future crops
• The residual soil nitrates in the fall increased periodically through the course of the study

From this study the key findings regarding P have been:

• Annual addition of P resulted in the rate of application being greater than the rate that P was removed, which increase the risk for runoff losses to surface water aiding in algae growth
• Once annual P addition was stopped the soil test P levels decreased faster om sites with a higher STP.
• Nitrogen fertilizer application did not accelerate the drawdown of STP

Ten-Year-Old Field Study Yields Wealth of Information on Manure Management

Group Sow Housing Across Canada: What Have We Seen

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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.

Adopting New Technology in Group Sow Housing

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Author: John Van Engelen – Hog-Tied Farms Ltd.

Summary: Sow Shower that clean up the sows before putting them into the nice clean farrowing crates. They sows are disinfected and come out with a nice lemon scent.

Mr. Van Engelen has installed Air crates for some of his farrowing crates. There are three “fingers” above the sow, when they sow hits the “fingers” it triggers the crate to rise up about 9 inches. This technology decreases the amount of piglets laid on, it saves approximately 75% of laid on. Of the four crates that he has installed in five years he has had only eight pigs laid on. Although they are advantageous through decreasing laid on piglets, each crate is approximately $1000 extra to install.

Wifi through the barn had to be installed for the farrowing feed system. The wifi aids in keeping people informed, people are capable of seeing how far along the sow is, how much she is eating, have the ability to change her BCS in the system and the diet that she is receiving.

Experimenting with nursery feeders at the moment as he is expanding next year. The two feeders he is experimenting with are a manual and automatic wet/dry feeder. He is finding that they automatic works better, however it does cost the producer $1200 extra to install.

3 way sorters with RFID Technology, pigs are assorted three different ways with the light pigs, medium pigs and heavy pigs all being separated.

Pig Performance Tester, installed in 2013. Records feed intake and weight.

Sow Nutrition in Group Housing Systems

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Speaker: Dr. Hyatt Frobose

Summary:

Increase in protein deposition over the course of gestation, later in gestation have an increased protein due to increase in mammary development. Three main components to energy are: maintenance, target maternal BW gain, and fetal development. Have to adjust basal requirement due to a variety of factors including: environmental temperature, housing system, health status and sow size (different parities).

There are broad categories of feeding systems, competitive and non competitive feeding systems. Aggression can have consequences such as an increased mortality rate, removals (due to lame or aborts), have to assume that all the sows are eating, and due to variation in body condition score potentially need to overfeed the group.

Over conditioned sows are costly because they are wasting feed and they have decreased productivity in the subsequent lactation. Common causes of over conditioned sows are overfeeding an entire pen to improve BCS of thin sows, not calibrating ESF, and improper staff training with regards to BCS.

Try to identify “non-eaters” quickly and move them to a relief pen.

Increasing inclusion of fibre helps to increase satiety and decrease aggression. However, variability in nutrients is significant in high fibre diets. There is also a greater risk of mycotoxin contamination in feeding high fibre diets.

Bump Feeding: traditionally, showed that sows had higher birth weights. However, most of the recent data shows that there is a limited to no benefit from pump feeding.

Parity Specific Diets – most diets are formulated to meet the requirements of gilts as they have higher amino acid and calcium requirements than older sows. Opportunity exists to save on the older sows as we can feed a diet that is more sync with their requirements, rather than overfeeding amino acids.

Prairie Swine Group Housing Jennifer Brown

Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Prairie Swine Centre, Production, Swine Innovation by student on July 20, 2018 | No Comments

Speaker: Jennifer Brown, Research Scientist – Ethology

Summary:

Ethology is the field of animal behavior, Dr. Brown’s work tries to understand what motivates a sow, and pigs in general, to do what they do and how to translate this into management practices.

Social Interaction and Aggression in Sows

Previously animal management has occurred in stalls, new management practices will require more husbandry skills. It is evident that there are two main issues that aggression occurs in sows:

1.  Mixing aggression: first 24-48 hours. Fighting occurs to establish their social status.
2.  Ongoing aggression: occurs after social order has been established

Management that can help reduce aggression in sows revolves around familiarity, previous experience, genetics, pen design, feeding, odour, group size/composition, and time of day.

There are four main feeding systems:

1. Floor feeding
2. Shoulder stalls
3. ESF
4. Free-Access Stalls

The style of feeding system will strongly influence the group size. Feeding systems that are competitive work better with a smaller group size, whereas a noncompetitive feeding system allows are larger group size.

Space Allowance:

Space costs money, therefor it is important to determine what the break point is where the sows are experiencing adverse effects.  The Code of Practice outlines recommendations regarding minimum space allowance for both gilts and sows. Smaller groups require larger allowances than larger groups as there is not as much shared space.

Pen design is critical and it is important to consider space allowance, feeders and drinkers (location and ratio), layout and separation of dunging, feeding and resting areas.

Building New or Renovation: What to Consider

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Author: Murray Elliot

Summary:

Swine Innovation Porc and Prairie Swine Center collaborated to hold meetings in both Manitoba and Alberta to aid hog producers on what to consider when making expansion plans.

“The focus is really to help people have a look at their current facilities. It can incorporate plans of what they hope to do in the future and to put those two together to make a facility that meets the new code of practices and meets current production today” – Murray Elliot

Pork producers are asking themselves whether they should be building new or renovate due to the 2024 codes of practice that they will need to implement. Although building from scratch is advantageous allowing hog farmers to develop exactly what they want the cost is generally much greater.

When completely rebuilding producers must adhere to the new codes and all of the minimum distances, however when renovating often the producer is grandfathered in. If the facility is in good shape it can generally be renovated at half the cost of completely rebuilding. However, with the new codes most herds do not fit into the old buildings, so most renovations turn into a renovation and an addition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=226&v=hvLeU8tuU6g

Hog Market Outlook and Pricing Methods

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Author: Ronald L. Plain

Reference: Banff Pork Seminar Proceedings 2018

Summary:

2018 is the third consecutive year with an outlook of record number of hogs slaughtered, as a result hog prices are likely to average slightly below the breakeven level. Growth in the U.S. ethanol market resulted in increased grain prices between 2006-2013. Increased grain prices resulted in increased financial stress for livestock and pork producers. In 2014 and 2016, feed prices were reduced and PED virus resulted in a reduced hog slaughter. These in combination resulted in record high hog prices.

Using numbers supplied by USDA, hog slaughter will be above 125 million head which is 3% up from 2017. It is expected that both Canada and the U.S. will export a greater amount of pork in 2018.

The Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act of 1999 has the requirement for large packers to provide the USDA with detailed information regarding the hogs they have bought. When purchasing barrows/gilts there are several categories the purchase could be split into:

• Packer sold
• Packer owned
• Negotiated
• Market Formula
• Other market formula
• Other purchase agreement
• Live weight priced
• Non-MPR hogs

Since 2002, there has been a significant decline in negotiated sales, with an increase being with packer owned hogs.

Hog Market Outlook and Pricing Methods