The Egyptians began working with concrete 5,000 years ago.
The Romans employed it widely by 200 B.C.
Modern civilization is built upon a stunning variety of concretes. It’s hard to find a modern structure that doesn’t use concrete.
In agriculture, it’s everywhere, from grain elevators to farmyards to processing plants.
It forms the basis and literally the foundation and flooring for most hog farms.
But in recent decades, concrete has been pushed out of many farrowing pens by cast iron, which has been seen to offer more flexibility and other advantages.
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However, hog barn designer and pig behaviour observer Kevin Kurbis of New Standard Ag said he expects to see concrete flooring for farrowing pens make a comeback.
“The big difference is in the sow comfort,” said Kurbis at the Manitoba Swine Seminar in Winnipeg.
“(It’s) not when she’s lying down. It’s when she’s standing.”
Kurbis is working with several barns that are using concrete in farrowing flooring and he’s noticing happier sows that are doing better for themselves, for their offspring and for the farmer.
On cast iron slats, the sow tends to stand less surely, with legs more widely spread, reflecting its lack of certainty about the surface. It reveals a level of anxiety that doesn’t help her thrive.
“It affects her biologically, as it does us. Levels of stress affect you,” said Kurbis, who acknowledged his work involves “hours and hours of sitting in barns and watching behaviour.”
The discomfort with cast iron flooring leads to less milk production and poorer body condition. The flooring isn’t bad, but it’s unfamiliar.
“The concrete, what it seems to offer is a much more stable footing for her, or at the very least she’s more comfortable because that’s what she’s been on for the majority of her life,” said Kurbis.
He’s now surveying and filming sows in barns to solidify his observations, but from what he’s seen, bringing concrete back is likely to bring enough improvement for sows that producers will embrace it.
“I see it being put back into farrowing,” said Kurbis.
This is why he classifies it as “upcoming unexpected tech” for the hog industry.
