The Rural Voice, 2003-04, Page 28QUALITY FLOORING FOR
FARROWING BARNS
V -bar Flooring
• 2 ft. to 10 ft. lengths • 2 ft. widths
• knurled or smooth bars • galvanized • self supporting
Vandepas Welding
R.R. 2 Kenilworth, ON 519-848-6537
CaII for the dealer nearest you.
Design Builders
Project Managers
General Contractors
NDMA RK
BUILDERS
landmarkbuilders.ca
519.364.3609
24 THE RURAL VOICE
hog prices haven't been at their best
has been difficult but in the long run
will pay off, he feels.
The expansion has allowed the
Wilsons to finish all their own pigs
now. They had been selling weaners
before the new barns were built.
The operation also includes
cropping of 700 acres. They grow
corn, barley and wheat for their own
feeding programs as well as some
cash cropping.
Rhonda not only does book-
keeping for the farm but also
works with the equipment.
Nicholas and Reid do barn work
along with a full-time herdsman and
a part-time student. Also invaluable
to the operation are their adviser on
feeding, their veterinarian and their
accountant, Reid Wilson says.
"Those three people do more for our
business than anyone else," he says.
Though Wilson loves operating
his group -housing barn, he's not out
trying to sell the idea to others. When
he spoke at the Centralia Swine
update he finished his talk by saying
"I'm not here to sell the barn, I just
use it."
But others think that group
housing is the way of the future, not
just because of pressure from an
animal welfare groups, but for the
sheer savings involved. As Blackwell
pointed out at the Centralia
conference, stalls are the most
expensive of all the options to build
with complicated cement work for
the flooring.
A second generation of electronic
sow feeding systems is adding
another alternative in group housing
but a new generation of floor feeding
systems is cheaper to build and
there's nothing to fix.
Blackwell predicted that over the
years, as barns need to be replaced,
group housing will grow in
popularity.
Groenestege has already built a
second 400 -sow barn using the same
group housing design. He has
prepared figures that show
substantial savings for someone
building barns of 100, 300 and 1,000
sows using group housing (see box
on page 16).
"It's definitely a worthwhile
option to look at," Groenestege
says.0