Scientists hope to reduce pork production costs by developing improved standards for the construction of swine barns.
Pork producers across Canada are being asked to identify areas of concern in their barns through a survey being coordinated by the Prairie Swine Centre and CDPQ, on behalf of Swine Innovation Porc.
Prairie Swine Centre president and CEO Lee Whittington says the information will be used to develop ideas for improving the standards, guidelines and codes that govern new swine barn construction.
Our first question simply asks the pork producer to identify what of the following areas possess some problems for them.
From our first survey we knew it was things like dry sow stall size and farrowing crate dimensions and ceiling height and alley width but for the purpose of this interview let’s just look at one.
Flooring came up frequently.
That is the width of the slat, the amount of slotted space, the finish on the flooring.
50 percent of all the pork producers surveyed in our first survey were dissatisfied with their flooring and fully a third of the pork producers surveyed were unaware of any standards or methods that they could use to select a better flooring next time.
One of our key questions on this survey that is going out is to try and find out to what extent, what problems is your flooring giving you because what we want to do is have two outcomes to our project.
One is to evaluate what is the economic impact of not knowing what type of flooring to purchase and number two is are there any research gaps or gaps in the codes that oversee the building of barns that should be improved that would help people make better decisions the next time they build.
To take part in the survey visit standardizationproject.questionpro.com or prairieswine.com.
