The Rural Voice, 2004-04, Page 23the early going was that they were
introducing the scales too late and
pigs were not eating as much as usual
because they were afraid to go
through the scale gates. When they
changed to introducing' the scale four
to six weeks after the pigs enter the
room they've found no drop in feed
intake, Pat says. Even once they start
the sorters running, they haven't
found problems with feed intake.
Pigs enter the scale on the way to
the feed area. One-way gates allow
the pigs into the scale and more gates
shut them out once they've gone
through.
When the sorters are
operating pigs that meet
the weigh classification are
diverted into a sort pen while the rest
of the pigs go back to the common
area.
"Our original sort area was too big
when we designed the room." Pat
says. "so we introduced an extra gate
to cut down on the size of the sort
area. As we keep sorting we can add
"We haven't fund
the perfect one -wag
gate get"
to the sort area size for the number of
pigs that keep entering."
Alterations were also required in
the sorting set-up. Early on pigs
would pile up if one balked at
entering the scale so a jump -bar was
installed to prevent piling. The
passage to the scale has been
narrowed down to prevent two pigs
trying to crowd in at the same time
and they redesigned the passage way
so one side is angled and the other
straight on.
A small percentage of pigs figure
out the one-way gates and manage to
get back and forth between the
common area and the feed area
without going through the scale.
The scale area has an emergency
release gate if it malfunctions so the
pigs can escape to the feed area.
The barn currently has a test room
with a different brand of scale than
the rest of the scales in their barn and
different types of one-way gates.
"We haven't found the perfect one-
way gate yet," Pat says. "That's one
of the biggest things we're still
combatting."
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