Better Pork - June 2007

Eye On Europe

Upstairs-downstairs pens make for contented hogs

The concept, intended to reduce building costs per feeding space, is made workable by a digital camera sorting system, which renders it unnecessary for anyone actually to go into the pens
 
by NORMAN DUNN

A newly-built pen for 380 feeding hogs is one of the first in Germany to feature an upstairs area reachable by two ramps. The hogs are stocked at 0.75 square metres per animal with 38 square metres on the upper deck, which lies 1.20 metres above the ground floor.

The design was intended primarily to reduce buildings costs per feeding space, explains farmer Christina Schulze-Föcking, who runs a 3,100 feeding hog unit with husband Frank. “There was a lot of skepticism amongst other farmers, but we can say that the hogs use the whole area. At night they lie mostly under the top floor, but during the day there are continuously animals lying on the top deck. I think this is because there’s more peace up there. They can relax without being disturbed.”

She adds that it is too early to judge the influence on performance, since the first batch of feeding hogs is not yet finished. “But there do not appear to be disadvantages so far and we are eager to go ahead and add an upper deck to two other large-group pens we have on the farm – one for 320 hogs and another for 450.”

Like the floor area in all the farm’s large-group feeding pens, the upper deck is slatted with slurry channelled to downpipes on the barn wall.

The farmer admits that conventional manual sorting of so many hogs in single pens would be made even more difficult by the upper deck. “The system is only manageable because we have automatic sorting and separation of the hogs through the digital camera-based LH optiSORT system. This means hogs are sorted and penned separately for slaughter without anyone actually coming into the pens, although we do check the big pens daily to see that there are no problems with any pigs out of sight underneath the top deck.”

Hogs in this system pass under the camera when going to their feeding point. The optiSORT system uses computer scanning of digital images to identify weight and slaughter-readiness before automatically marking and separating the hogs for slaughter via the same camera-watched gates.

Swine solitaire keeps Dutch hogs from fighting

Giving hogs playthings such as chains or balls is well-established on European farms as one way to reduce bullying and fighting. But animal behaviourists are asking if this is enough.

Would fighting be even less –and therefore the welfare status of hogs much better – if the animals had real problems to solve every day?

This is the thinking behind a new “game” for hogs devised by scientists at the Dutch LTO research institute’s livestock welfare department. The “game” is a sort of swine solitaire with participating hogs having to nose a ball round a circular track before a “prize” is delivered from an incorporated hopper full of concentrate feed.

The new “ball automatic,” as it is called in the Netherlands, can keep the hogs occupied for very long periods of time. “We are just testing the game at the moment, but we have found that we can set the system to give a reward of feed only after the ball has been pushed around the circuit 10 or even 20 times with no falling-off of interest by the hogs,” explains one of the scientists.

While most hogs seem to become quickly enthralled by the game, there is a problem with one or two lazy types. “Just like humans, there are always a few animals who are less interested in ball games and we will probably have to think up something else to keep them occupied,” reports a researcher. The ball automatic is expected to be on the market later this year.

Is the change to large pens faltering in Germany?

Farm advisers in Germany have long preached the advantages of reduced building costs where large pens for more than 30 animals are planned in hog feeding barns. But results from a survey of over 500 swine farms in the Weser-Ems district by the local swine management interest group showed that not too many have been listening – and also indicated why.

For, out of all the farms surveyed, only six per cent had decided to change over to pens with more than 30 hogs apiece. And those who stayed with the traditional pens of 10-13 feeders often proved better in terms of hog performance, health and returns. Meanwhile, the few farmers who have changed to groups of 30 and over are, in turn, getting better performance from their hogs than those feeding in medium-sized pens with from 13 to 30 hogs.

Some 40 per cent of the farmers surveyed have remained with small pens, and average returns from these showed less mortality at 3.3 per cent, compared with 3.8 per cent for other group sizes, and better lean meat percentage at 56.4 per cent against 55.8 per cent for the over-30 hog groups. (See Figure 1.)

The area’s swine management interest group reckons that these returns back up the general feeling that while investment is reduced with larger pens, more individual care is still possible with smaller pens – and this pays off.

Average daily liveweight gain, however, was slightly better with the larger groups, at 739 grams against 729, although the survey organizers point out that only 32 farms had pens with more than 30 hogs, compared with over 200 keeping 13 or less feeders in each pen.

Deal with local farm college helps Austrian hog farmers expand

A realistic teaching environment for young farmers coupled with business expansion for local commercial hog producers has been achieved by the Giesshuebel School of Agriculture in Lower Austria.

The school was short of funds to build a modern, practical instruction unit for its student hog farmers. At the same time, three local farmers needed new land to build a large breeding unit. The local college sold the land with the proviso that it could use the unit for teaching its students. At the same time, the farmers got financial help for making their new unit more “student-friendly.”

This financial injection has given the 600-sow complex 109 farrowing pens of 10 different designs, including free-farrowing (no crates), partly slatted, fully slatted, plastic and steel flooring systems. The farmers are also paid a yearly sum by the college and the country’s leading agricultural university in Vienna for allowing teaching and some research to take place in the building.

Also paid for by local government is a special “visitor passage,” teaching rooms and larger hygiene entrance facilities, where every visitor has to shower and change into clean overalls before entering the building.

The three farmers admit that they lose time and need more labour input because of the large variety of farrowing facilities built into the barn at the request of the college. But they add that, in return, they are happy about the chance of expansion into such a modern unit and note that there’s an added bonus in having students around all the time. Listening to the students’ questions gives them a new perspective on their business and how it can always be improved, they say.

Hospital pens halve hog deaths in Denmark

Building special pens for the treatment of sick or injured hogs is not only mandatory on Danish farms, the pens also help improve profits in many feeding herds, according to research by the National Committee for Pig Production (NCPP).

Returns indicate that a 50 per cent reduction in deaths or emergency slaughter can be reasonably expected on an average unit where poor-doing hogs are taken out of the normal environment and kept in special “comfort” pens. These should include a soft lying area, heating if required and access to feed and water without competition. “Even a 30-40 per cent reduction in the average post-weaning death rate of 8.9 per cent in Danish herds (2005) would normally cover the cost of building a few hospital pens,” points out a NCPP report. “But, on many farms, deaths can be cut by even more than this and that means there’s a potential for the hospital facilities actually to make a profit.”

NCPP calculations underline that every single percentage in mortality reduction brings a significant increase in profit per finished hog. For instance, in the feeding house a one per cent reduction in deaths for animals between 30 and 105 kilograms would increase profit per finished hog by an average $1.23 Cdn (based on a slaughterweight price of $1.73 Cdn/kg).

Hospital pens became mandatory in Denmark as early as 2005 with the recommendation that “two to five per cent of pen space should be devoted to pens where hogs have about twice the standard living space and peace and quiet.”

The regulations, believed to be the first in Europe covering this aspect of sick animal care, stipulate that a hog should be moved into a hospital pen if its welfare is compromised by staying in a regular pen. Preferably, these hospital pens should be grouped together so that treatment is simpler and observation can be carried out more often.

One design recommendation published by the NCPP suggests 1.53 square metres of floor space per hog of between 100 and 130 kilograms, for example, and that two-thirds of the pen be floored with a soft material such as rubber matting and one-third slatted. An adjustable canopy should be available to over at least one-third of the lying area. BP