Better Pork - August 2016

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12 Better pork August 2016
said. After a relatively steep learning
curve both for pigs and humans in
his business, they’re now farrowing
30 animals weekly. They add and
remove sows without a lot of the
schoolyard bullying that character-
ized their introductory phase, Ahrens
said.
Adam Schlegel converted a por-
tion of the 2,500-sow operation at
Schlegelhome Farms to loose housing
during the 2014 renovation of barns
that dated from 1979. His Tavistock-
area farm hosts the first commercial
demonstration of Canadian-built
SowChoice Systems equipment for
groups which came with strong tech-
nical support from CANARM Ltd.,
whose manufacturing facilities are in
Arthur.
Even so, the partial transition
from gestation stalls to loose housing
in one of two barns in the operation
has been anything but easy, Schlegel
said in a recent phone interview. An
outbreak of Porcine Reproductive
and Respiratory Syndrome virus dur-
ing the training phase didn’t help.
“Pretty much everything went
wrong for us that could possibly go
wrong,” he said. “That said, it’s getting
to a point now where we’re happy with
the product; but it was harder than we
anticipated to transition.”
Schlegel uses CANARM’s elec-
tronic feeding gear to manage fine
detail and individual feeding for his
sows. Then again, he has that level of
feed control in stalls. One benefit of
the switch to loose housing is a shift
in the orientation of husbandry from
systems to animals.
“On a day-to-day basis, instead
of walking the hallways between
crates you’re walking through the
pens. You reach out and touch the
animals. They come up to you and
nibble on your coveralls; so from that
perspective, I like it. It’s animal skills
we’re looking for now,” he said.
Conversion is a big job, both in
husbandry and cost. Schlegel figures
some operators just won’t bother or
won’t be able to manage the costs.
“I think you’re going to see bigger
barns and less of them,” Schlegel said. BP
MAINFEATURE
Conversion is a big job, both in
husbandry and cost, says Adam
Schlegel. Schlegel converted a
portion of the 2,500-sow operation
at Schlegelhome Farms to loose
housing in 2014.