Pilot project | Two producers will convert 
their barns to group sow housing to determine the most cost effective design
Converting hog barns to allow for group sow housing won’t be simple or cheap.
However, the University of Manitoba and Saskatoon’s Prairie Swine Centre hope to make the process easier for producers.
As part of a joint initiative that started this fall, officials are working with two large but undisclosed hog producers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba to develop blueprints for conversion, using a model developed by the U of M.
“They’re businesses that both know that they want to look at options for the future,” said Helen Thoday of the Prairie Swine Centre.
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“Currently, no one is really making any financial decisions whether to convert or not because the code is still unknown.”
The project is getting underway as some restaurant chains move toward eliminating sow confinement from their supply chain and as Canada inches toward a new code for managing pigs.
It considers the existing dimensions, infrastructure and pig numbers of a facility and provides producers with options for floor plans and feeding systems and offers a cost estimate.
The intent is to help producers identify the most cost-effective way to convert barns to group housing using existing infrastructure: slats, drainage systems and slurry pits.
Officials will be using the pilot barns to fine-tune the model, identify the positives and negatives of each option and document producers’ concerns about converting.
More detailed blueprints will be drawn up with engineers once the producers choose a plan.
Their experiences may be valuable to other producers, said Thoday.
With costs running as high as $1,000 per animal, a conversion could potentially top $2 million, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
“Generally, buildings haven’t had much reinvestment done on them, which is a standard thing that happens in all of the livestock industry when no one is making any money,” said Thoday. “If you have a really old house, if you start poking about it, sometimes it’s more problematic than bulldozing it down and starting again. I think some of these barns will have the same problems.”
Flooring, concrete and the design and size of existing slurry pits are major concerns and a potential expense, said Laurie Connor, a re-searcher with the U of M.
“Certainly if you get into any type of situation where you have to tear up any of the concrete to enlarge pits … it becomes tremendously expensive,” she said.
Connor expects the U of M model will remain viable under an updated pig code.
“We wanted to ensure as we progressed with it over the past couple of years that we were in line with what we thought was going to be occurring with the code and certainly from what I’ve seen from the code so far, we are.”
