The Rural Voice, 2001-08, Page 49There's life after
gestation stalls
If the worst fears of Canadian
pork producers come true and
consumer pressure leads to the
banning of gestation stalls for sows,
it needn't be the end of the world, a
group of speakers told those
attending a conference in
Shakespeare in June.
Producers attending the
Srockmanship, Swine Behaviour and
New Sow Housing Designs
conference, heard success stories
from Ontario farmers who have tried
loose housing for stalls, comparisons
that said farmers might actually save
money using loose housing in new
construction.
Dr. Dave Barney from the
University of Guelph's Arkell Swine
Research centre told of the project to
convert a barn designed in the 1980s
for stalls to a group housing system.
In the early 1990s sows were put in
gestation stalls immediately
following breeding. From 1995 to
2000 when use of artificial
insemination increased dramatically
and bred sows were kept in breeding
rooms equipped with various sized
pens and a total of 64 gestation stalls
until pregnancy -checked at 35 days
post breeding.
Thinking began to change in 1996
with the visit of Dr. Gerhart
Schwarting from Germany who
introduced European thinking on
alternatives to gestation stalls.
Barney visited the farms of Chris
Cockle and Bauk Bottema in 1998 to
study their loose housing systems for
gestating sows. In 1999 money
became available to renovate one of
the two rooms housing gestation
stalls into a loose housing system.
Plans were designed to take
advantage of the existing liquid
manure gutters, house at least as
many animals as before, provide feed
drops in each of four pens and create
a sprinkler system over the slatted
area to encourage dunging patterns
and cool the sows.
With the new system Dr. Barney
says management of the animals up
to breeding has remained the same
and the majority of bred gilts
46 THE RURAL VOICE
News
continue to be housed in the room
with gestation stalls. Only after sows
are confirmed pregnant at 35 days are
they moved from the breeding area to
loose -housing pens.
The groups include 28 sows which
corresponds to the stall space in the
farrowing room. The animals are not
regrouped. Sows get 2.5 kg per sow
in a once -a -day feeding each
morning. The sprinklers are operated
three minutes out of every half-hour
in summer and out of every hour in
winter.
Barney said the holding capacity
of the room has increased using loose
housing. The pattern of air flow is
improved because the stall system,
penning and feeding systems created
many obstructions. Staff is pleased
with the overall cleanliness of the
room with very little effort necessary
to keep the lying area clean.
The lack of steel penning reduces
the noise and the necessary repairs
compared to the gestation stall
system. Short walls created within
each pen break up the groups and
reduce aggressive activity.
Bruce Kelly of Stockland Farms at
Wallenstein renovated an existing
barn into 50 eight -by -18 -foot pens
with eight sows per pen: a total of
400 sows with an average 18 square
feet per sow.
He had a problem with fat sows
because the drop canisters he used
dropped 2.45 kg per sow per day
instead of his target of 2.3 and the
barn was running at 380 sows instead
of 400 so each sow was getting more
than its share of feed. Not only was it
costing about an extra $8,000 a year
in feed, but "No good can come from
fat sows," he said.
The system has been recalibrated
to deliver the proper amount of feed
and it can feed 400 sows in one
minute, Kelly enthused.
Kelly, who farms with Joanne
Selves, says he is in the process of
modernizing his breeding barn,
including a turkey curtain siding.
Chris Cockle from Heronbrook
Farm at Embro described building a
new liquid -manure, loose housing
barn to house 400 sows in 1995. The
criteria was that the setup wouldn't
require any more space than a stall
system. He figured out a stall
required 19 square feet per sow when
you took in feeder space and aisles.
The result was a barn with 16
pens, each 16 by 28 feet with a 12 -
foot slatted floor area at the back.
Each pen holds 25 sows. The farm
still uses 56 stalls for sows that are
too lean, too fat or have gone lame.
The barn is naturally ventilated
using five chimneys. There is some
dust in the building because they
make their own feed and use a drop
system. Pigs, however, like the feed
system, lining up with their heads in
the air to catch the feed as it drops.
He gives them extra fiber by splitting
a small bale of straw among the 16
pens each day.
Labour costs are generally low
with one person being able to feed
the sows, fill the pens and move the
sows out to farrowing stalls.
Building costs were "quite a bit
cheaper" Cockle said because there
were savings in the purchase of stalls.
The system is also animal friendly
and the sows are happy, he said.
"Don't be scared by the concept,
because it works," he said.
Dave Linton showed elapsed -time
videos of his group -housing, straw -
based barn near Brussels. His barn
was built to imitate an outdoor
system with the benefit of indoor
controls and was built against the
advice of his veterinarian, he said. "I
didn't know if we were ahead (of
everyone else) or behind," Linton
told producers.
The barn was 25 to 30 per cent
cheaper to build. Linton says he feels
straw is the key to making his system
work.
The barn has an aisle down one
side of the barn then long pens
extending across the rest of the
width. A lower area in the middle,
dropped the width of a two-by-four
(Linton says he'd make it deeper if
he was doing it again) is where sows
are encouraged to dung, with
sleeping at one higher end and
feeding at the other. Gates between
pens in that central area can be
swung to close the sows into either
end of the pen while a tractor and
scraper clean out the dunging area.
Linton, his wife Brenda, and
family, feed by hand using a bucket,
an operation that takes 20 minutes a
day. He also divides up a bale of hay
every second day between all the