New tools being developed by the University of Manitoba will help pork producers planning to switch to group housing of gestating sows identify the system that will best match their individual operations.
The University of Manitoba in partnership with Manitoba Pork Council is developing tools to help pork producers planning to convert from conventional stall housing of pregnant sows to group housing select the system that will work best for their particular management systems.
Dr. Laurie Connor, the Head of the University of Manitoba’s Department of Animal Science, says there’s no one ideal group housing system for all situations so the challenge for producers is identifying what will work for them.
You very often base the system on the feeding system and there are various options there.
It depends on the type of flooring or manure handling system that you have.
There are options there and variables, the group size that you have so really there are many variables that need to be considered and we’re trying to then gather together all the available information, the expertise, put this into a package that is readily accessible, usable so that producers can in fact help to determine what system is going to work best for them.
Then the second part of that actually involves the engineering principles and the design options for existing barns.
Qiang Zhang who is in Biosystems Engineering is leading that part of the project and they are actually developing a simulation model whereby a producer can put in the information that they have about the size of the barn and various of these other variables and it will help them to determine then the layout of a particular design, how that will fit in their barn and is also going to be linked to an economic model that will then also help to determine the cost.
Dr. Connor says the project has been underway for about a year and the goal is to have the work wrapped up and be ready to offer workshops late this coming fall.
