Farmscape for April 21, 2015

The president and CEO of the Prairie Swine Centre says, as pork producers plan to move to group housing they must consider a range of factors from capital costs to how staff and pigs will adjust to the new system.
As the result of changes to Canada's Pig Code of Practice, by 2024 the majority of Canada's pork producers will have moved from stall housing of gestating sows to group housing.
Producers considering loose housing will have the opportunity to discuss the changes as part of the Prairie Swine Centre's Spring Producer Meetings in Niverville tomorrow, and in Portage La Prairie Thursday.
President and CEO Lee Whittington notes the centre has been involved with group housing since 1999 and has worked with producers who have both made the change, and who have built new.

Clip-Lee Whittington-Lee Whittington:
The different twist we're taking with this year's meeting is we're bringing in some producers that have first hand experience in how their conversion went and how they manage their sows and we're blending that with, so what is the science?
For example, producers who move into this new type of sow housing, they'll have some concerns typically how do I get my gilts to go through my electronic sow feeder.
We have a lot of science behind the training of gilts for instance and how often we need to move them through the system and how can you do that with the least amount of labor?
So we're melding the challenges and success that individual producers have had with what does the science tell us about that?
What do we know about the behavior of the animal that is going to make the job easier to make that conversion.

Whittington says it's a radically different system than what we have been used to for the past 25 to 30 years so there are questions about such factors as capital costs, changes in how staff operate and how the sows will adjust to the new system.
For more information visit prairieswine.com
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council