Researchers are warning hog producers to anticipate a shift away from gestation stalls in coming years.
Science shows there are problems with housing sows exclusively in stalls throughout their pregnancy. With concerns about animal welfare, researchers predict there will be increasing pressure from the public and the food industry to eliminate the stalls.
“Producers need to start anticipating where their markets are going and where they need to go to meet that market,” said Harold Gonyou, a researcher at the Prairie Swine Centre in Saskatoon.
Read Also
Dry summer conditions can lead to poor water quality for livestock
Drought conditions in the Prairies has led to an decrease in water quality, and producers are being advised to closely monitor water quality for their animals.
“We already have major producers within North America that are planning a shift to group housing to meet the market requirements.”
Prolonged confinement in stalls can lead to a weakening of the sows’ bones and muscles. The lengthy confinement also stresses the sows, which can further affect their productivity.
Gonyou referred to a statement released recently by the American Veterinary Medical Association as evidence that alternatives need to be considered. He said the association recommended moving toward group housing systems as producers become more familiar with them.
Meanwhile, restaurant chains and supermarkets are auditing packing houses in terms of animal care and welfare and farm auditing is taking hold in North America.
Gonyou said there is a large risk to ignoring those trends.
“If major consumers – supermarket chains and restaurants – come in and say they want sows in groups, they’re not going to give us 15 years to make the transition,” Gonyou said. “They will say, ‘starting in six months, we will only buy from people who have sows in groups.’ “
One of the challenges for the hog industry on the Prairies is that many of the larger sow barns built in the past decade relied on gestation stalls. Due to the large investment, a rapid shift away from the stalls is not practical.
A solution may be for the industry to voluntarily phase out the use of gestations stalls for total confinement by 2015, said Laurie Connor, a professor of animal science at the University of Manitoba.
That would provide time for producers to evaluate the alternatives and to make changes that coincide with the natural need to overhaul barns as they get older.
“If you don’t act, then you get caught with someone else’s rules and someone else’s requirements,” Connor said.
“I would really hate to see a legislated change. I think it’s much better if people can drive their own change.”
Connor and Gonyou hold differing views on whether gestation stalls will eventually be eliminated from sow housing.
Connor thinks producers should have the right to choose between having only group housing or having a combination of group housing and gestation stalls. There still could be a place for the stalls, she said, citing the first month of pregnancy as one possibility and free access to the stalls for feeding as another possibility.
However, Gonyou questions whether gestation stalls will be acceptable in the long term.
“There will always be concerns raised about keeping sows in stalls. There are some very definite issues there in terms of some of the physiological condition of sows.
“Living in stalls is what we call a chronic stressor. It accumulates during the months (the sows) are in there. We see a deterioration in their bone strength and we see a deteriorating in their muscles during the time they are in those stalls.”
Gonyou believed there will be more group housing included in the construction of sow barns during the next wave of hog industry expansion. However, he cautioned that some group housing systems work better than others.
“There are significant issues in terms of learning how to operate the different systems,” said Gonyou. “I don’t suggest that there are not.”
In a group housing system that is well managed there can be a number of benefits, he said, including a reduction in lameness, increased longevity for the sows and increased litter size.
Connor said the average turnover in sows is about 50 percent, meaning that half the sows need to be replaced each year.
