A researcher with the University of Manitoba says the majority of Canadian pork producers making the switch to group housing of gestating sows will be looking at converting existing operations.
Facing increasing public pressure to eliminate gestation stalls some of North America’s largest pork processors have committed to moving to group housing systems for pregnant sows.
The University of Manitoba, in partnership with Manitoba Pork Council and the Prairie Improvement Network, has developed a computer program to help pork producers planning to switch select the system that will best fit their management systems.
Dr. Laurie Connor, the Head of the University of Manitoba’s Department of Animal Science says, in many cases producers will be looking at renovating existing operations to accommodate the change.
One of the reasons that in Manitoba the interest was and is in actual conversion was because the vast majority of the very larger operations, and this would be over a thousand sows, were built in the mid to late 1990s to around 2000 sort of thing so the feeling was that the actual life span of the structure, the barn, the shell basically would continue on for quite a period of time but what would need replacement would be the equipment.
Then the decision is do we replace the stalls with stalls or do we take that opportunity to convert.
So really the vast majority of the larger barns certainly that are considering group housing would be considering converting.
As for time frames, Dr. Connor notes Manitoba Pork Council is encouraging its members to be targeting 2024 for moving to group housing and recently a number of the larger Canadian retailers have indicated they would like to see stall free pork production by 2022.
