Farmer's Weekly (South Africa)
Commercial piggery: Group housing improves pig health and productivity
CP Kriek and his wife Gerda swapped their industrial engineering careers for farm life in 2012 with the purchase of Bloubank Estates, the holding company for Taaibosch Piggery.
“As engineers, we love challenges and taking things that aren’t working optimally and making them better,” says Kriek, who grew up on a farm.
The Krieks have worked hard to bring their farm up to European standards, implementing group housing and an electronic sow feeding system. This has dramatically improved animal and herd welfare on the farm, and has also resulted in improved productivity.
Taaibosch Piggery, near Fochville in Gauteng, comprises four sections: a 2 200-commercial sow breeding and nursery unit; a weaning unit; a growing and finishing unit; and a genetic nucleus. An on-farm gene transfer centre provides fresh semen to the breeding unit on a scheduled and on-demand basis.
In addition, the operation has a 80-sow stud, which is due to be increased to 250 animals by June.
Kriek uses a crossbreeding system with Large White, Landrace, Duroc and Piétrain breeds. The first two have excellent maternal traits.
“The Large White is a doublepurpose breed and makes
management
Sow behaviour needs to be observed carefully, he explains.
“We look for outliers and those that don’t fit in. If seven sows are lying down peacefully and one is walking around in agitated manner, that sow needs attention as she may be in heat.
“Pigs are easier than most animals to understand as they’re so vocal. You can identify a great deal simply by listening to the noises they make. This is important, as the turnaround time is short.”
If something is missed, it can affect breeding later.
“Initially, we had a slight dip in production when we switched to group housing due to the learning curve involved, but we’ve more than made up for it since.”
in the herd as the semen of the best boars can be used on more female animals.
“Time is a major factor. If you need to inseminate between 60 and 100 sows in a day, you can’t do so with boars,” he adds.
After the second insemination, the gilts and sows are moved to a group house in the evening so they can settle in quickly, eat, sleep and wake up the next morning adjusted to their surroundings and each other.
FARROWING AND WEANING
The animals remain in the group house for 16 weeks during gestation and are moved to the farrowing house five days (or even fewer) before their expected farrowing date.
Taaibosch has a farrowing rate of 92% and the piglets are weaned at four weeks at an average age of 28 days. They are grouped according to weaning weight and sex, and groups of potential gilts are selected at this stage. The weaned piglets are kept at a separate weaning site that has access control and follows strict biosecurity control measures.
After six weeks, the piglets are sent to the farm’s grower and finisher site. Here they undergo another round of selection and a group of 48 is chosen to go to the gilt rearing house. Terminal animals are sent to grower houses and kept here until they are ready for market at 19 weeks old, by which time they will have achieved a carcass weight of between 83kg and 88kg.
Kriek applies an individual number to each animal to ensure lifetime traceability. It also aids in performance testing and helps him in his slaughter planning, as the animals are weighed and measured individually.
Taaibosch boars are chosen for breeding from the herd.
At 19 weeks of age, the top boars are selected for further performance testing and the best one is placed in a boar selection programme where he
case, during the next feeding cycle the system will be triggered to guide her through gates to a holding area where she is flagged for insemination.
The gates can also guide her back to the main group or into the holding area if she is due for a vaccine or check-up, based on the individual programme for the pig.
‘ pigs that can move around are fitter, so they’re better prepared for farrowing’
The system accumulates an enormous amount of data, which makes remote managing of the herd far easier.
“The weight monitor gives accurate, weekly weights of the sows,” explains Kriek. “We can correlate this with starting weight, feed intake, feed conversion rate and growth curve. This all ties back to the overall performance of the sow, which we can now measure accurately.
“In a situation where we can’t get to the farm, which is 12km from our office, we can still see exactly which animals are on heat, how much they’re eating, and if their weight progression is up to date.”
But technology is of limited use if data collected is not managed properly.
“You can have the best production systems, but if you don’t have good Internet connectivity, then you have a problem. We quickly established that we needed an intranet system before adding any other technology. You can’t run an electronic sow feeding system if you can’t access the information because the Telkom lines are down or the Internet is too slow.”
Kriek stresses that a database needs to be planned and managed with care to get the most out of it.
“It’s easy to create masses of data, but where and how it’s stored will mean the difference between useful and irrelevant data.
“The numbering format you use for an animal, for example, or the way you name a feed ration and building, is very important. In five years’ time, when you have a huge volume of data, you also want to have a coherent and fully operational system.”
• Email Taaibosch Piggery at cp@bloubank.com.