Research shows that pregnant sows living in open pens can be as productive as those living in stalls.
Research suggests that operating costs of barns with open housed sows are roughly the same as with stalled sows.
Research finds that building a new sow barn with electronic feeders and open pens costs about the same as building one with gestating sow stalls.
And research also finds that a barn with solid concrete floors and straw bedding can be as easily and economically managed as one with slatted floors and a liquid manure handling system.
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But is there enough research on these topics to conclude that any of these alternative systems can be used profitably in prairie hog production?
The answer is no, researchers admit, but they hope to change that so farmers will be prepared if they choose or are forced to adopt radically different sow barns in the future.
“We want to gather information that will help producer groups make those decisions about if they’re going to convert and transition away from sow stalls,” said Laurie Connor, an animal science professor at the University of Manitoba who leads a multidisciplinary team of researchers investigating alternative hog barn systems.
“What are some of the costs associated with it? How do you have to manage it differently? What are the tradeoffs? There are a whole list of things that we really need to take into account.”
These are not academic questions.
Sow stalls are already banned in the European Union and some U.S. states, and Manitoba has tough liquid manure spreading standards in its campaign to save Lake Winnipeg’s from phosphate pollution.
When producers contemplate new hog barn construction, they’ll face the danger that sometime during the barn’s life, regulations will be imposed ending the use of gestation crates and liquid manure handling systems.
A retrofit would be extremely expensive.
“Any pig producer has to look at this and say, is this something that is going to be required in 10 or 15 years?” said Harold Gonyou, an animal behavior specialist with the Prairie Swine Centre.
“If I’m building a barn, should I build one that I know won’t be acceptable 15 years from now?”
Gonyou thinks open housing will be a bigger challenge to barn workers and managers than to pigs.
“It’s not that big of a deal to take care of sows in groups,” Gonyou said.
“It is a big deal to think about trying to change your system over.”
But there are great uncertainties about whether open-housing system or a straw-based, solid-floored system are commercially viable.
Qiang Zhang, an agricultural engineering professor at the U of M, said economic viability will depend on at least five factors and how they interact:
• structure and cost of an alternative barn system;
• labour impact on workers and management;
• feeding system differences in maintenance, capital cost and feed cost;
• manure treatment management, capital cost, labour, and operating costs of spreading manure;
• sow longevity and health.
“All of those things have to be put together, then you have options,” Zhang said.
“It will be a combination of things and you will have to see if they will work for you.”
Manitoba’s new research
The U of M is among leading North American research institutions studying open-housed pregnant sow systems. The university, with its facilities at the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment, runs side-by-side comparisons of two types of open-housed gestating sow systems.
One system uses slatted floors and liquid manure removal – similar to a contemporary commercial barn – and the other uses solid concrete floors, straw and dry manure removal. Both are designed to use electronic sow feeders.
Gonyou has also conducted small-scale tests of open-housed sows in various pen arrangements to see which tends to be best.
Brian Buhr of the University of Minnesota has done preliminary economic research on open-housed gestating sows. His findings, published in May, would be comforting and alarming to prairie producers pondering a future of open housing.
The study,Economic Impact of Transitioning from Gestation Stalls to Group Pen Housing in the U.S. Pork Industry,didn’t look at many operations because few commercial-scale open housing systems exist in North America.
However, he made several observations:
• there appear to be no productivity differences between open housed and stalled gestating sow systems;
• sows need to be put in stalls for a minimum of 28 days after breeding to keep pregnancy rates up, so some stalls are still necessary;
• the potential for catastrophic productivity losses are greater with pen systems than with stall systems;
• forced retrofit of an existing barn with useable life would cause a major economic cost to the farmer;
• productivity can slump after a conversion but tends to return to pre-conversion levels after a few months as producers learn new husbandry and management methods;
• a new open housing barn with large pens of 66 animals and electronic sow feeders (ESF) can be built for $1,277 US per sow, compared to $1,568 per sow for a trickle-feed, small pen barn. The barn with the electronic sow feeding could be built for about the same cost as a typical contemporary barn with gestation stalls.
Timing is key
Buhr said producers might be able to avoid costs if they wait until their stall barns wear out and then replace them with a large-pen, ESF system.
“In fact, at life-end it makes positive economic sense to transition to an ESF barn from a traditional sow barn (because the construction cost is slightly lower),” he said in his report.
“However, any policy which requires conversion to ESF or pens in general prior to the end of the life of existing stall barns results in a loss to the pork sector.”
Producers in the EU have already been forced to adopt open housing systems, and practical experience is being gained there. Researchers in Canada hope to piggy-back on the European experience.
However, they also know that production methods that work in one place don’t always work elsewhere.
Alternative systems must be matched to Canadian conditions to be viable.
Most hog barn construction has stopped on the Prairies because of the financial devastation brought on by the recent crisis in the industry. Little activity is likely for a couple of years until producers rebuild their equity and have money again.
Gonyou hopes he and fellow researchers will have more hard scientific analysis to help farmers make their choices when the time comes.
“We’re getting more experience using these systems,” he said.
