Better Pork - June/July 2002

Special report on loose housing

Is it the way of the future? Ontario producers weigh the pros and cons

Some Ontario farmers who have given it a try are fervent fans. But others are sceptical, seeing it merely as a response to animal welfare concerns. Meanwhile, Premium Pork, Ontario's largest operator, is proceeding cautiously with it

by DON STONEMAN

Blame it on the pull of new technology, the fear of animal welfare legislation, or the not-so gentle nudgings of public opinion-conscious food corporations. Dry sow loose housing is undergoing a resurgence in Ontario.

Is this management practice desirable, and does it work? So far, the jury is definitely out. Some farmers have committed wholeheartedly to the concept. Some have rejected it, citing lost production and disasters in other countries where practices have been changed under pressure from animal welfare lobbies. And others are investing in their own testing while they continue expansion with traditional facilities.

Even among loose sow practitioners, there is a wide variety of feeding methods, both high and low tech, and an even greater number of management tricks to keep peace among the sows.

South of Woodstock, Nathan Huinink loves the new loose houses for dry sows in the expanded sow barn he set up last September. He says electronic feeders keep the sows from fighting and production hasn't suffered. "The numbers are staying up for me," he says. At New Hamburg, John Lichti, a former chairman of Ontario Pork, has rejected loose housing. "I'm getting rid of the loose housing that I have," he says in exasperation.

Somewhere between those two extremes is Lucan-based Premium Pork, which will put pigs into a 2,200-sow barn with loose dry sow pens near Melbourne this month. "We are walking the fence on this one," says Greg Howard, general manager. "It's not a pass or fail. We simply don't know."

Nathan Huinink farms with his father Gerry south of Woodstock. The Huininks are expanding to 300 sows farrow-to-weaner from 100 sows farrow-to-finish after forming a partnership last year. Dry sow management revolves around electronic feeders located in the gestation pens. After weaning piglets, sows are placed in dry sow stalls. Three days after breeding, they are released into pens, where they stay for the rest of the gestation period. It takes Huinink four weeks to fill a pen at 15 sows bred per week. A maximum of 60 pigs go into a pen.

A transponder in the right ear signals the feeder that a sow has entered and identifies her. Feed is distributed at a rate of a few hundred grams every 35 seconds or so into a trough in the feeder and water is added to speed consumption. When the sow's daily allotment is reached, or the ear transponder is absent, indicating that she has left the feeder, the flow of feed stops. The diet of each sow is pre-determined, depending on her body condition and also her stage of pregnancy.

Are there benefits? "I don't have runts any more," Huinink says. Moreover, older sows are producing the same number of piglets that they did before, with higher birth weights. His "barn record," set in late April, was a sow that had 13 piglets born alive weighing a total of 24.5 kg. The average is 1.5 to 2 kg per piglet born, and a litter weight averaging 20 kg.

Huinink combines sows in a pen on what he calls "key period days." Four days after breeding, the eggs drop out of the uterine horns into the uterus. "If they get the fighting out of the system before the eggs drop, they don't lose fetuses," he says. His practice of putting new sows into a pen in late evening seems to reduce fighting to a couple of hours the next day.

Huinink cites other benefits. Pigs are quiet when a worker enters the barn, no longer associating a human with feeding time. The transponder on each pig is also a heat detector. Huinink keeps boars in a pen near by. A sow walking over to the boar must pass under a device that counts the number of seconds that she stands, and records it on the computer. If there is a distinct change in a sow's pattern of behaviour towards the boar, Huinink is sure that the sow is in heat.

He finds it easier to keep proper condition on sows. He is also saving about 40 pounds of feed per parity per sow. If a sow doesn't eat one day, the feed stays in the bin rather being eaten by another sow or wasted. "That's a huge feed savings cost," he says.

Electronic sow feeders have changed since they were introduced in Ontario more than a decade ago. Some producers say the devices were less robust, and sows pounded on them to get more feed out. Also, sows entered from the rear and backed up to get out, becoming susceptible to vulva biting. In the new feeders, sows enter from the rear and a gate closes behind them. When a sow has finished eating, she leaves at the front through a swing gate.

The feeder has solid sides. "She feels safe and secure," Huinink says. It takes about three days for a gilt to learn how to use the system, he says, and she remembers how to use it during her next gestation. Seven or eight of 10 gilts will learn to follow a sow and go through on their own.

"They learn real quick that they only get fed once a day," he says. "I know I can do well with these. I know they will pay for themselves real quick."

Lichti is no fan

On the other side of the fence is John Lichti, who farms near Shakespeare. During an expansion in the 1990s, Lichti turned a finishing barn into dry sow space, running half of his 1,200 sows in pens and half in stalls. "We've lived with that until now," he says.

But, in April, he moved pigs into a new barn where 95 per cent of the dry sows are in stalls. In less than three weeks, he can see an improvement in general conditioning. Lichti asserts that the move to "natural pork, story pork," and loose housing in the United Kingdom has contributed to a major decline in agriculture. "There has been an underlying promise and assumption that the consumer will pay for it. That is bogus. If you give in for the wrong reasons from a production standpoint and expect that, because the customer asked for it, he will pay for it, then you are very, very foolish. The evidence is overwhelming."

He is convinced that sows are better off in stalls. "They are easier to control and easier to manage." In loose housing, "the technology is still lagging a little bit. I don't have time to develop it."

Meanwhile, Premium Pork, Ontario's largest operator, with 30,000 sows in 2001 and growing, is keeping an open mind on the subject. Construction was scheduled to be completed June 1 on a new barn with loose dry sow housing at Oakdale, near Newbury. Premium's first loose housing barn will look just like its other 2,400 sow barns.

The new barn is being built on the "footprint" of the 2001/2002 barn model, says Greg Howard, Premium's general manager.

. The idea is that if this system is successful, the interiors of the existing barns can be converted to loose housing when stalls wear out. The farrowing section is the same, as the old barn, as is the breeding section.

Conception results are excellent, Howard says. Sows will be moved into the loose pens once ultrasound confirms that they are in pig.

Howard has looked at loose systems in Europe and also in the United States. He sees possibilities of enhancing productivity in late-term gestation feed management. Different feed curves will be plotted for different parity animals and information will be put into a handheld computer, which Howard hopes will lead to a virtually paperless recording system.

Pigs are housed in groups of 110 to 120 sows, split into two pens. Open a gate and the two pens can co-mingle. Howard stresses that the sow groups are static. "Group dynamics dictate that," he says. Introducing a small number of sows into a big group isn't advisable. The experience in Europe is that sow groups work fine once the pecking order is established.

Transponders on the sows allow them to be fed individual rations. The room operator will check the sows' condition visually and pig that are too fat or too thin will be flagged. The computer feeder will then adjust the amount of feed they receive daily.

However, Premium is going slowly with this, Howard stresses. The experimental barn represents five per cent of Premium's production and Premium wants to see the benefits before a similar barn is built. It will be two years before Premium has reliable results from the Oakdale barn and, says Howard, "we want to make sure it is viable. "We are walking the fence on this one. It's not a pass or fail. We simply don't know."

Farmers have different views

Other producers have a wide range of attitudes to loose housing. Brussels producer Neil Hemingway converted a feeder barn into dry sow pens about the same time as Shakespeare's John Lichti. Unlike Lichti, Hemingway likes loose housing and says he is thinking about building a state-of-the art dry sow barn with the latest individual identification technology.

Hemingway believes loose housing is the way of the future, and expects that producers will have to cave in on animal welfare issues, whether the consumers who call for them are right or wrong. "Whatever the consumer wants, right or wrong, that's what you'd better produce."

In 1994, the Hemingway operation switched from farrow-to-finish to farrow-to-early-wean. Dry sows went into loose housing in the finishing barn and into two rented off-site barns with a total of 650 sows.

The groups range from 15 to 30 sows, depending on pen size. Hemingway sedates the sows when they are grouped, finding that sedation seems to ease co-mingling. Pigs are grouped as soon as they are bred. The group may be split later but no more pigs are added. Sows that are thin are taken out of the group.

He believes that the pecking order is more easily established if there is a clear delineation in size. The big ones will eat first while the smaller females get their turn later.

Hemingway floor-feeds dry sows every other day. It is important to "do the math" and make sure there is enough pounds of feed to meet all the pigs energy needs for two days. He doesn't think that he has lost productivity with group dry sows compared to crated dry sows "On the farm, if you can't see a difference, there isn't a difference."

He says group sows must be managed in a different manner than sows in stalls and points out that management skills must be honed in order to pick one sow out of a group of 20. "We have to develop systems that animals like and people must adapt to those systems, rather than the other way around. You've got to have a different set of eyes when it comes to management and checking them for health. You've got to pick that one pig out of a group of 20 and look at it. You can't just walk along and see that individual animal in a dry sow stall."

No tags, no feed

At Wallenstein, Bruce Kelly runs 800 sows and sells weaners. He puts eight sows per pen in an old finishing barn with small pens. The pigs go into the pens after pregnancy testing and remain in that group until farrowing. Four plastic canisters suspended over each pen dump feed onto the floor. Recently he put spouts onto the four canisters to spread the feed into four piles into a seven-foot circle. He says this makes it tougher for the "boss pig" to dominate over the feed pile.

Kelly remains leery of electronic feeders, remembering them in their first incarnation a decade or more ago. A lot of the 10-year-old electronic feeders "are out behind barns," he says. He is concerned about keeping the ear tags in the sows. "In two per cent of my herd at any one time, the tags are chewed out."

An animal with no tag gets no feed. Last Christmas Kelly completed a new addition with traditional stalls. Sows are bred and held in stalls for 30 to 35 days until they are preg-tested. Pregnant animals are then put into the group pens. He explains that when sows went into groups directly after breeding, "we felt that our farrowing rate wasn't up to industry standards."

He also believes that once the females are past 35 days in pig and are confirmed as pregnant, they are less susceptible to losing their litters because of stress. He considers his operation to be in line with the new European regulations. "Europe has banned stalls for pregnant animals. They didn't ban stalls outright."

The new barn addition with the stalls "We are only four weeks into breeding but we believe our farrowing rate has gone up by eight per cent. We had one week where it was 15 per cent above the average, but we are a little leery about making huge claims."

At Alma in Wellington County, Eric Van Grootheest and his wife Annette have tested four different dry sow systems at the same time before settling on one they liked. They breed sows in pens of five or six and keep them there until they are preg-tested, then move them into a 20-by-40-foot pen that is broken up with 12 foot dividers every 6.5 feet. The sows "aren't that aggressive when there are that many places to hide," Grootheest says. There are 20 to 25 sows per pen and each one has about 25 sq. ft. of space. They are fed on the floor every day along the front of the pen, and there is space for all to feed at once.

Sows tend to cluster in groups according to their own size. If one sow is too large or too small for the group, it is moved to a gestation stall "but that hardly ends up happening," Van Grootheest says. Though he is not a fan of gestation stalls, there are still 30 of them in the 350-sow operation.

Dynamic sow groups just as productive as those in gestation crates

For a while in the last decade, there was a major push in Canada to look at so-called humane swine handling systems in Canada. An important federal project was gutted when Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada restructured its research facilities in the mid-1990s. A new research project was started at the University of Guelph's Arkell swine station in May of this year, but most, if not all, of the pig handling research in Canada falls on one research facility run by one man, Charles Gonyou of the Prairie Swine Research Centre in Saskatchewan.

Gonyou has been working with loose-housed gestating pigs for two years, using both dynamic and static sow groups. Some of his recommendations run contrary to the wisdom of producers interviewed by Better Pork.

Gonyou wants to be able to control the amount of feed that a sow eats and wants the sow to be able to eat without fighting. Floor feeding brings its own set of problems, he says.

He is a fan of dynamic sow groups, a management system eschewed by many producers. In dynamic sow groups, sows are added to the group as they are bred. In static groups, the group is established at the start and no sows are added. They may be removed and placed in stalls if they lose condition badly or cause too much grief for the other sows in a pen.

In a dynamic, size-sorted system that Gonyou tested, sows proved to be just as productive as their counterparts in gestation crates. He bases this on measurements of farrowing rates, the percentage of sows bred that farrowed, and litter size.

Gonyou recently tested a sorted-dynamic system, wherein sows bred during the week are sorted (depending on their size) into three different pens. Sows were added to the existing group in each appropriate pen. That group tended to turn over sows every four to five weeks. Animals leave to farrow and newly bred animals enter the group, which stays at about 30 animals, all roughly the same size.

In that system, a sow normally had three days of social disturbance when new animals were added. But animals in her group were all relatively the same size. He says this system had production results equal to sows in gestation stalls.

Now that Gonyou has shown that dynamic-sized sorted groups work for producers, he is looking at other systems, hoping to find more flexible ways for producers to use group housed sows.

He has also tested static groups of sows of varying sizes, bred all at the same time, and found a two per cent loss in productivity in terms of piglets born. The productivity loss means that one additional sow per 30 sows bred weekly is required to produce the same number of piglets as in crates. Upon closer analysis, Gonyou found that, in the static pens, younger animals didn't perform as well as the dry stall average, but that older animals outperformed stalled females. "When they were young, they had difficulties. When they were older, they did extremely well," Gonyou says.

In a previous test, he used 30 animals in a group. Now he is testing up to 40 animals in a group and is looking at different ways of managing the system.

In the static systems already tested, females went into pens the week after they were bred, early in their pregnancy. Gilts were immediately penned with older sows. Now Gonyou is testing a system where young sows are held back for five weeks in a special gilt group, before being put into a sow group that has just been bred.

This gilt group is also where the new breeders are trained to use the feeding system.

If younger females can remain relatively unstressed past the point of egg implantation (about 35 days after breeding), Gonyou hopes that farrowing rates will be unaffected.

Gonyou is trying to go beyond the edge of European research into dry sow management. "The Europeans avoid this. They just say: 'don't put gilts in with sows.' They would run a separate gilt pen the entire time. I say it would be more convenient for us to run gilts with sows, so we are trying to figure out the problem and get it done."

Likewise, the dynamic group has been converted to a larger dynamic group, with 120 sows in one pen eating from three feeders. Gonyou hopes that, with a very large group, a bullied sow will be able to escape from an attacking sow more easily. Pens at the Prairie Swine facility have partially slatted floors. "We aren't using any straw right now, but we feel our system could handle recreational straw," Gonyou says.

It's still a question of how to control the individual feed intake. You can feed them every day in individual stalls -- likely the most expensive system, but one that is probably easiest on the sows. A few farms in Canada do this, Gonyou says.

There are also trickle systems (known in some countries as "biological fixation" because a sow must leave her own feed to attack another sow, which she is unlikely to do.) These are not as expensive as electronic sow feeders and usually work best in groups of 10 or less. Gonyou says individual feed intake control is not as good in these systems, and sows will likely have to be sorted by size. In short, it will take more effort to run the trickle system than the electronic sow feeding.

Better Pork talked to many producers in Ontario, but could find no one who was using trickle feeding in this province.BP

Arkell's intriguing dry sow barn

Some Ontario barn builders have been intrigued by the concept presented by a loose sow housing demonstration at the University of Guelph.

The open concept dry sow barn consists of four pens holding a maximum of 30 sows each. Each pen consists of two parts, a 20-by-24-foot solid floored area and a 16-by-20-foot slatted area.

This spring, Guelph animal behaviourist Tina Widowsky began studying differences in productivity between pens populated with varying densities of pigs. There will be reproductive analyses as well as behavioral studies. Pigs eat from a drop feed system. Feed falls from an overhead bin into four corners of the laying area. The sows aren't competing as much as they would if there was just one feeding area and all can eat at one time.

Some pigs may get more to eat than others, admits Tom Parker, lead hand ag assistant at the University of Guelph's swine facility at Arkell, where this research will take place. "We let them work that out."

The pen is partially divided into smaller areas with four-foot divider walls. This lets the sows develop sub-groups in the pen group and also gives more wall space. The solid floor has a five per cent slope towards the slats, allowing urine and feces to flow away from the bedding area.

Tim Blackwell, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food's swine extension veterinarian, is also following this closely. The Arkell station is featured in a video he produced recently with funding from Ontario Pork and the Canadian Agricultural Adaptation Council. The video features Arkell, as well as the system in barns of three producers that apparently are successful. BP

The research that isn't being done

David Fraser, Agricultural Sciences Chair/Animal Welfare Agro-ecology at the University of British Columbia, still has a well-deserved reputation for his work in swine animal welfare. His work, however, ended years ago. "There was quite a reduction in farm animal welfare research in Canada a few years ago," says Fraser. "Our program ended in 1996."

Ironically, a rather abrupt stop to federal support coincided with the beginning of a massive expansion of pork production in Canada. "It's unfortunate, in a way," says Fraser. "It's a hot topic. We are down to one person in Canada who is doing any research."

Previously, he says, there had been a substantial swine behaviour and research group in Ottawa, but this was disbanded between 1995 and 1997. One of the casualties of that cutback was scientist Peter Phillips, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Greenbelt Farm, Ottawa of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Greenbelt Farm in Ottawa. One of his projects was aborted mid-way through development.

Phillips, still with Agriculture Canada, had developed a unique, two-level loose housing dry sow project in Ottawa. For two years, he compared the new system with stalled sows. The conclusion: the loose-housed group was three per cent less productive than the stalled group. "Most (95 per cent of) sows did fine." The lost productivity was split between smaller mean litter size and a longer mean farrow-to-farrow interval. Phillips says that five per cent of sows caused the low numbers, failing to adapt well to loose housing.

The story here is a little more complicated that that of simple side-by-side farrowing comparisons. Phillips' study showed that the health of sows was comparable with sows in stalls, measured by culling rate and deaths. While the stall-housed sows produced three per cent more piglets, the stocking rate in the two-tier system was increased by 25 per cent. With two levels of pigs, much less floor space was needed per animal, while labour was comparable with sows in dry stalls.

"The economic benefits would need to be weighed against he risk of diminished reproductive performance," said the study, which was published by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers in 1997.

At about the same time, the Lacombe Research Station, Lacombe Alta. planned a new swine barn and installed a two level dry sow area there. But planned research at Lacombe never got off the ground because of the federal cutbacks. Bill Starr, farm operations manager at the station, said in April that the two-tier system was in use but its productive capabilities had not been studied.

He added that when the Ottawa Centre for Food and Animal Research was closed down, the two-tiered pig system in Lacombe was incorporated into the regular barn system used to produce pork for meat research. "It's just like a regular production barn," Starr says. The two-tier barn is "part of the standard operating procedures."

While there have been no productivity studies done, Starr is pleased with the outcome. How pleased? The barn is being expanded. Starr says more space is being given to the second level, since pigs like to go upstairs to lie down. The people who work in the barn think it works fine. But once again, he stresses, there have been no studies done to see if there are productivity losses or gains with this system or whether refinements could make improvements. BP

What the builders say about loose housing

Chepstow builder Tom Fritz is going full speed ahead with loose dry-sow housing in a series of barns built for Fritz Concrete's production arm, Clearwater Pork. "If there is a barn in the Clearwater loop, it won't be anything but loose housing," says Fritz.

Sebringville builder Fred Groenestege is more restrained. "The old timers say that you should walk before you run," Groenestege says. He points out that, first, producers have to decide if they want to adopt loose sow housing. Then they have to decide if they want to go with the new high-tech electronic sow feeders, or if they want to use a less expensive system. Electronic feeder manufacturers are driving the current wave of interest, he says.

Fritz understands that some farmers are hesitant about moving towards loose housing. "It's the same old story. Who wants to be the guy who tries it and makes all the mistakes?" But Fritz is willing to try and, to that end, barns in Fritz Concrete's pig production loop, Clearwater Pork, are all equipped with loose gestation sow pens.

"The animal activists are saying a lot of things today about the confinement of animals," Fritz says, and grocery and restaurant giants Wal-Mart, Wendy's and McDonalds are listening. "Those big chains buy a lot of pork. When they tell you that they want to see animals produced in a friendly environment, I don't think we are going to have much choice for much longer. We might as well get doing it," says Fritz. He also believes that herd health will benefit.

There is little evidence so far that loose sow pens have hurt or helped production in Clearwater barns. Pigs went into these barns last fall and Fritz figures that the system needs at least a year to prove itself.

"We are reasonably happy with what is happening. There have been a few glitches, a few little design problems that we've already changed, but nothing yet that says we shouldn't have done it."

Clearwater Pork's dry sow barns have electronic feeders, one in each pen of 70 to 80 sows. Each pen allows for 18 sq. ft. per animal. Fritz says there is no more space required than in a stall barn "by the time you add in stall space and alleyways."

The pigs walk and lie on a total slatted floor. As for bedding, "We don't want any part of that. They are very comfortable on the slatted floor." The floor consists of 8.5 inches of solid concrete, then a one-inch opening, this builder's standard floor.

Fritz says the barns built so far have a 1,500-sow capacity, which he considers the minimum size needed to make the electronic feeder economical. The management in the barn has to be fine-tuned for the sows, he notes, repeating a common producer refrain that a loose housing barn is "run differently from a stall barn."

He stresses that some pigs aren't suited to loose housing, just like some pigs aren't happy in stalls. You have to sort those sows out, he says. "We do have a number of animals that don't adapt to the feeding system. We have to get rid of them and weigh that off against the more positive things."

He reiterates his commitment to this style of managing dry sows. "If there is a barn in the Clearwater loop, it won't be anything but loose housing."

Barn builder Fred Groenestege, president of Fred Groenestege Construction Ltd. of Sebringville, says his customers are interested but remain more reserved about dry sow housing than those of his competitor, Tom Fritz. He predicts that the company will adopt these systems. "But we want to make sure we get it right. I would rather be involved in the early-adaptor stage rather than in the pioneer stage," he says.

He thinks that a lot of the "hype" right now about dry sow feeding is fed by the excitement over the new generation of electronic feeders. Some of that, he warns is "driven by emotion, rather than science."

Groenestege says farmers have to decide if they want to go with dry sow housing or with stalls. If they go with dry sow housing, they must decide how they will feed the sows. There's lots of research from Europe on this, he says.

However, he has concerns abut widespread conversion to loose sow housing and isn't sure "if our genetics and management capabilities are up to speed to handle it." He points out that the Europeans have worked on their systems for as long as 20 years. And he isn't sure that pigs will be any better treated in these barns.

That said, Groenestege says his company is making adjustments in the barns they are building now so that they can be easily adapted to accommodate other systems later on. "At least then you have some choices down the road," he says. "I sure wouldn't be basing a decision on production. It's an animal welfare issue." BP

. . . . And what the manufacturers say

Joel Koops, head of sales Bosman Agri Inc. of Moorefield, installed the system in the Huinink barn south of Woodstock. It is called The Team System and is made in Kansas by one of the few such makers in North America. There are about 100 of them installed on the continent.

The feeder delivers dry feed to between 50 and 60 sows in a group. The number is limited by the hours in the day. As pigs get closer to farrowing, they get more feed and spend more time in the feeder -- between 15 and 20 minutes a day.

A sow walks into feeding station and the gate closes behind her. The antennae read her eartag, recognize her and, if she still has a daily feed balance, will drop feed into a trough in 100 gram increments every 35 seconds. That gives her time to eat the feed in front of her and be ready for the next dose, if she still gets an allocation for the day. Closer to farrowing, when they need to eat more, the software bumps up their feed intake.

Koops says there are some producers still using 10-year-old technology. He describes the earlier generation of electronic sow feeders as "a little ahead of their time." People looked at how they were feeding dairy cattle and tried to do it for pigs, Koops says. The stalls weren't constructed sturdily enough, the electronics "probably weren't as good as they should have been" and some sows were wearing transponders on neck collars. Now transponders are in eartags. "We are at a stage now where the technology is there," Koops says.

Blair Gordon of St. Marys supplies the feeders for the Premium Pork barn at Oakdale. He markets feeders in Canada for Echberg Equipment Inc. and recently returned from a 2,800 sow barn installation in Alberta. He says the company is called Echberg Equipment Inc. and the head company is 85 per cent owned by the stall's maker in Denmark, Skiold-Echberg A/S.

Sows in the Premium barn will be outfitted with electronic Allflex tags in their right ears. The feeder recognizes the sow from the transponder as she enters the rear feeder gate, which is always open if the feeder is empty. The door closes behind her and, she has finished eating, she exits from the side. She gets a dry feed mixed with some water from a separate spout.

Gordon says Echberg's founder had re-designed a computer feeder imported from Britain.

John Kloeze of Dwyer Manufacturing Ltd. in Dublin is watching how the electronic feeding business goes. Dwyer makes liquid feeding systems and recently mated one with an electronic feeder from Holland, which was installed on Eric Breteler's farm in eastern Ontario.

Kloeze says the system feeds a 2.5-inch tube about half a metre long. When a sow enters the feeding station and is identified by her eartag, the feeder dumps the tube's contents into a feed trough.

Dwyer also sells a trickle-type feeder, but hasn't put any of them into barns in Ontario. Kloeze says they have been installed in Western Canada and are suitable for either slat or straw-based barns. An auger running from a feed dispenser drops feed individually into troughs in feeding stalls. There's a feeding stall for every sow in the pen.

It's not an electronic feeder and there are no transponders. "That is the beauty of it," Kloeze says. Because the feed is dispensed slowly, he says, sows eat all that is in front of them. This discourages sows from fighting, since a sow would have to give up her own stall in order to bully another.

The system works well in Europe, Kloeze says. Sows tend to claim stations as their own, so the barn manager can vary the amount of feed going to a stall and thus have some control over a particular sow's body condition. BP

A double identification system for sows

Eric Breteler remembers the old electronic sow feeders when they were still developing as a technology in Europe. The glitches have largely been ironed out and he has installed a new one in his barn at Chesterville, south of Ottawa.

Sows using the old electronic feeders wore transponders that were supposed to keep them out of the feed station when their daily feed quota was exhausted. But a smart boss sow would wait until a smaller sow was next in line to enter the feeder and, when the back door opened, the bigger sow would force the small one to the side, and then eat her ration of feed. The same thing would sometimes happen when a sow exited, the boss sow hooking her nose on the exit door and forcing her way into the feeder.

Mannebeck, the German maker of this feeder, developed a double identification system, Breteler says. First the sow is identified at the back gate. Another sensor is located at the feed trough to provide further confirmation of the sow's identity. Breteler says sows quickly learn that there is no benefit to pushing another sow aside. The new feeder also has a double exit door, which foils attempts to enter another way.

Breteler imported his Mannebeck feeder from Germany. Recently Farormor at Shakespeare, became a dealer for Mannebeck feeders.

Breteler is feeding his sows a liquid diet. Keeping the premix in solution was a challenge. It was settling out in the bottom of the tanks which are mounted over the feeder. He blames this on limestone in the premix. He is now replacing some ingredients previously in the premix with whey from the cheese plant at nearby Winchester.

His hog rations in Holland were based on as many as nine byproducts. Now Breteler plans on sourcing distillers' grains and perhaps some soy byproducts. He has four bins with a storage capacity for 300 cubic metres of feedstuffs.

Finishing pigs will eat most of the byproducts, and his finishing barn is still under construction. His sows had their first litters in April. BP

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