RED DEER, Alta. – When Cliff Derewianka finds a problem on his purebred hog farm, he doesn’t wait for somebody else to come up with a better idea. He goes to his shop and invents a solution.
Derewianka is a farmer inventor from Waskatenau, Alta. who showed a number of his ideas at the Alberta Pork Congress held here March 19-20. His inventions are devices to make work easier for a one-person operation like his 60-sow barn.
“If I come up with an idea and I can’t buy it, I design it,” he said.
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The tools he has built in his workshop are simple, yet nobody had thought of them before. He hasn’t patented his ideas because he found the cost of a patent is beyond what he can earn by selling his tools.
“You have to get a feel for the market and you hope to get there before somebody steals your idea. I guess that’s a gamble you take.”
His first invention was the pig holder, a specially designed tube on a stand that securely holds piglets up to four weeks of age. There are three different sizes to accommodate the growing piglet.
Snug as a pig in a thing-a-ma-jig
The tube opens in half and the piglet is set on a foam covered bottom half. The pig’s front feet slip through a rectangular opening and the top comes down to hold it in place. A tray is attached to the side of the stand and the handler is able to castrate, vaccinate or tattoo the firmly held piglet with a minimum of fuss.
A floor scraper is another of Derewianka’s inventions. It weighs about 14 kilograms and scrapes manure from floors of pig barns. It looks like a modified shovel with a serrated edge but has an attachment in back that shoots pressurized water onto the manure. There’s a wheel on the bottom so the scraper pushes along the floor like a vacuum cleaner.
“It cuts down the washing by about a third to a half,” he said.
Derewianka has also come up with a wheeled cart with a grated floor to keep piglets clean while they are moved. There is a removable tray below the floor to catch wastes.
The manure agitator is a more sophisticated tool that sits on a slatted floor to remove manure that’s clogging gutters by the pens. It is motorized and features a large beater that fits into the gutters to break up the manure.
