The Rural Voice, 1993-10, Page 29group of 16 cows "we might have
some pleasant results in two or three
years."
In swine, Hurnik has been
working with others to design new
systems. Working with Jim Morris,
now at Ridgetown College, he
designed a system for housing dry
sows that gives them more exercise,
is labour saving in terms of feeding
and provides for better heat detection
to indicate when breeding should
take place.
Rather than having the sows in a
confinement system, they live in a
small group of six sows. In this
system, the sows travel to the feed
instead of bringing the feed to them.
The six sows go to the feeding
compartment with six feeding
stations where a sensor reads the
number on each pig's neck and gives
it the appropriate amount of feed.
Because the sows are all getting fed
at the same time, there is no fighting.
When it has finished eating the
sow goes out the back door and back
to its group pen. On the way back,
however, it goes by a pen housing the
boar. Those pigs that are in heat will
tend to spend a lot of time around the
boar rather than going back to their
pen immediately. Another sensor
picks up the numbers of which
animals linger with the boar, and the
operator can get a printout of what
sows are in heat. Under the system
the same computerized feeding units
can be used for more pigs because
the group pens are rotated through
the feeders. The pigs get more
exercise by walking to get the feed.
The system (known as the HM
system for Hurnik-Morris) is now in
operation at Ridgetown and the
experience so far shows there is less
aggression among the smaller
groups. A natural hierarchy develops
in all groups and by keeping the
groups together for their entire
breeding life, there aren't newcomers
and the accompanying sorting out of
roles. The sows stay together except
when they are farrowing and raising
their young. Once the pigs are
weaned, they come back together
again and they remember each other
from before.
The experiment started with two
groups of gilts from the same stock,
one in individual confinement
gestation crates and one in a group
housing situation. The evidence,
Humik says, is that the sows from the
group system have better individual
production records, having both a
higher average weaning rate and a
higher average of weaners per sow.
He sees a bright future for this
alternative housing method and
predicts that within 15 years it will
be in wide use, particularly in
countries like Germany, Holland and
Denmark. "Group housing in small
groups will solve many existing
problems." However, he says,
farmers running the system will have
to be on their toes. "The less the
animal is restricted, the more is
demanded of the manager. He has to
be more accurate, precise, more
attentive."
The system may be more
acceptable to the swine industry too
because it isn't as radical a departure
from present situations as the poultry
housing alternative. Existing barns
can be re -equipped for the new
system without horrendous expense.
It didn't cost much more to set up the
experimental system than the existing
system, he said. The electronic
feeders can be more economically
used under the group system than
under an individual confinement
system.
Having worked on one system for
dry sows, Hurnik is working with
student Zhenseng Lou on redesigning
the farrowing crate to make nursing
sows more contented. Using an oval
shape in a design so new it is kept
secret until the patent is approved,
they have managed to use space so
efficiently that they can provide for a
sow to turn around in the same space
as the traditional farrowing crate.
Those crates, which force the sow
to face in one direction all the time,
create a huge amount of anxiety on
the part of the mother pig, Hurnik
says. If a piglet squeals behind her,
she wants to see what is happening
and gets worked up if she can't tum.
With the new design she will be able
to turn, yet the piglets will still be
protected from her lying on them. So
far the results from the new crate
have been stunning, Hurnik says,
with sows both having larger litters
and raising them with fewer deaths.
His belief that happy animals will be
more efficient animals is bearing
fruit.0
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