The Rural Voice, 2003-04, Page 20Creature Comfo
What's best for the animals turns out to be best for t
owner in Reid Wilson's new group housing drg sow ba
By Keith Roulston
A new dry sow group housing barn is the latest addition to the expanding
operation of Reid Wilson and his family at Wilson Livestock Company Limited.,
Wilson, below, says the barn saves labour and keeps the sows happier.
The sows in Reid Wilson's new
group -housing dry -sow barn
are happy. The owner is even
happier.
"I can't get over how well it
works, from the point of labour" says
Wilson, who runs Wilson Livestock
Company Limited, a 500 -sow
farrow -to -finish operation just north
of Milverton, with his wife Rhonda
and son Nicholas.
The new dry -sow barn, built as
part of an expansion that also added
1,000 finishing spaces and 900
weaner spaces, holds only 100 of the
farm's dry sows, but if he was
16 THE RURAL VOICE
replacing the space he already has in
another nearby barn, this is what he'd
do again, Wilson says. He estimates,
for example, that it takes only 30
seconds to feed 100 sows using a
two -auger, drop feeding system that
puts feed in four areas of the pen.
The Wilson barn was built by
Fred Groenestege Construction of
Sebringville, based on the
experimental set-up at the University
of Guelph's Arkell research farm.
There one of four dry -stall rooms
was changed into group housing with
drop feeding on the floor.
Despite the fact it was the first
group -housing barn he had built,
there weren't any real problems
elicoiintered, Groenestege says. He
basically duplicated the Arkell
experiment, except that the pen size
dropped from 40 by 20 feet at Arkell
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to 32 by 20 feet for the Wilson barn.
(The Wilson barn also has windows.)
About one-third of the pen's floor
space is slatted. The remaining space
is subdivided by five-foot stub walls
to provide extra privacy and more
wall space for the pigs to lie against.
The walls create four mini -rooms
with one feed drop in each of those
spaces.
"It's neat" says Groenestege of the
simplicity of the system. "Sometimes
we tend to make things too
complicated", he adds.
Wilson's willingness to grab onto
a new idea made the building of his
company's first group -housing barn
possible, Groenestege says.
Wilson has always been ready to
look at new ideas. He had one of the
first computerized feeding systems
for 10 years before getting rid of it. It
Cost per sow -place for 3 different styles of dry sow barns
100 sows 300 sows 1000 sows
$971 $800 $713
Stall barn
Group pens
18 sq. feet
single feed line $660
Group pens
26 sq. feet
Double feed line
privacy walls $904
$527 $500
$733 $686
Estimates compiled by Fred Groenestege Construction