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revolution:
housing
MAIN
FEATURE
Better pork
August 2016
7
Group housing is the only form of managing gestating sows that Geert Geene
has ever known. Yet this Huron County farmer acknowledges the system
has its challenges.
by JIM ALGIE
G
eert Geene was a kid when
his farming family emigrated
from Holland 15 years ago;
but even at 10 years of age, he knew
they were moving partly to avoid
mounting agricultural regulations.
Geene feels a bit that way about
Canada’s two-year-old Code of
Practice for the Care and Handling
of Pigs with its push toward estab-
lishing the country-wide practice of
group sow housing by 2024. Then
again, Geene, with his 1,400 sow-
farrowing operation in a four-year-
old barn in northern Huron County,
has quietly become an example for
others considering just such a move.
He’s among eight featured produc-
ers working with the University of
Saskatchewan National Sow
Housing Conversion Project.
Geene farms with his father, Gys,
and a brother, Peter, in an op-
eration that includes hog finishing,
broilers, corn, soybeans and wheat.
Geert, who studied agriculture at
the University of Guelph Ridgetown
Campus, has never known any other
way but group housing for gestating
sows. He has no criticism, however,
for farmers who advocate confine-
ment.
“I think the farmer knows best
what’s best for his animals,” Geene,
27, said during a barn tour one
afternoon recently. He stood as he
talked in the barn’s lunch room, as
if caught midstream on a busy day.
He’d pushed his hearing protection
cups back on his skull. A cell phone
and hog markers tucked for easy
access into the chest pockets of his
overalls.
He’d been talking about how
much he enjoys farm work, both
livestock and crops. In both, progress
is visible within days. You see your
work amount to something, he said.
Some stalls remain
The Geene barn still has stalls, of
course, used mainly for pregnancy
checking and for animals who have
experienced conflict with the group
social environment. But the space
loose
the
a new age of sow management
stepping into
Geert Geene is among eight featured
producers working with the University
of Saskatchewan national Sow Housing
Conversion project.