Cover Story: Batch Farrowing - One way to reduce disease and manage your workload

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

More Ontario producers are turning to the batch system to help them improve their time management, concentrate the work on a few days a week and better control disease in the barn

by KATE PROCTER

Batch farrowing is catching on with Ontario producers. It can give smaller producers an opportunity to enjoy some of the advantages of a larger herd, while still maintaining the benefits of staying small. But there are also advantages for both health and labour.

Batch farrowing differs from a continuous flow system in that it concentrates the breeding and farrowing of sows into groups. Producers can choose two-, three-, four- or five-week batches depending on the goals and objectives in their herd.

Scott Douglas runs a 600-sow farrow-to-wean operation near Leamington. Before going to a batch system, he was weaning twice a week into a small nursery. Located in Essex County, he is a long way from other barns where the pigs would be placed after weaning, which meant higher trucking costs. He realized he could keep costs down if he only had to truck the pigs every two weeks. Since he was only producing enough pigs with his continuous flow system to fill half of the nursery at a time, Douglas was also spending a lot to heat it until it was full.

At the end of 2007, pig prices were low and he had to reduce costs, so he did not bring in any replacement gilts for six months. Because his sow numbers were low, he was able to vary the wean dates in order to get the sows into batches. "I couldn't imagine doing it if you were right full. There would be no possible way," he says.

In August 2008, he started breeding sows to farrow in two-week batches and farrowed the first batch in December. Douglas credits Brian Ciliska, his herd manager, for making the new system work. One of the big differences was in the farrowing rooms. For three days, the entire focus in the barn is on farrowing. "It allows us to put a little time and tender loving care to bring those guys around," he says. "Overall, I really like it. But the first time we did the breeding, we were worried sick. It was really stressful to get 65 sows bred, 65 farrowed and 65 weaned."

However, now that it is running smoothly, Douglas says the system has streamlined the operation. The workload on the weekend has been considerably lightened; there is no breeding.

Now he looks at his animals as 10 small herds and finds them easier to manage. He keeps a close eye on the parity spread of each "little herd" and has a target of bringing in 10 gilts each breeding. Douglas thinks it is easier to keep the barn really full and running as efficiently as possible. He has managed to achieve an 85 per cent farrowing rate over the past four months.

When he and Brian were getting started, Douglas says they used a lot of Regumate, an Intervet hormone treatment fed to females. "I should have bought stock in Intervet." He laughs. "It worked very well for us."

Now they consider the number of gilts required for subsequent batches when they heat-check the gilts and always work two to three batches ahead of the actual batch that is next on the list to breed.  If they see that there will not be enough gilts to hit the desired target, they use Regumate to make sure they have an adequate number to breed.

Regumate works the opposite way to PG600, another commonly-used hormone for controlling estrus, explains Dr. Francisco de Grau, technical services manager with Intervet. "They are fantastic tools, but people have to know what they are doing," says de Grau. He recommends that producers talk to their veterinarian to develop a protocol for proper hormone use.

Regumate is used on cycling gilts, while PG600 is used on gilts that are not cycling. Using a combination of PG600 and Regumate on females can provide more control over the exact time gilts come in heat and results in a smaller cycling window. "There is a benefit to combining the two to get the gilts in a tighter group," says de Grau.

Douglas also credits his Masterfeeds swine business manager, Jim Loucks, for helping him get set up in the first place. Loucks spent a lot of time with him and helped by connecting him with a veterinarian from Germany who was very experienced with the system.

As well as cutting transportation costs, using the batch system has helped by reducing their propane use by 75 per cent now that they are not heating a nursery at half capacity. They are also using less of the expensive pig starter in the nursery, which has also reduced costs.

Douglas admits that it can be a little stressful if a sow dies at the beginning of her lactation, but overall the system works better in fostering litters and making pigs more uniformly sized.

More weekend rest
Mike Bosch and his father, Walter, operate a 1,200-sow herd near Monkton. They converted their herd to a four-week batch farrow system in March, 2008, mainly to help them manage their labour and marketing better. 

Mike explains that they were tired of the same schedule every week. The constant flow of work meant that they were getting behind on maintenance and office tasks. Weekends were also difficult to manage from a labour perspective, as there were always sows to breed on Sundays. Batch farrowing "provided the opportunity to get a bit more rest on the weekend," says Mike.

Mike and Walter own a company in the United States where they send all the pigs they produce for the finishing stage. Using a batch system allows them to fill an entire barn with one batch and enables them to feed the pigs a diet closer to what they require. When it took longer to fill the barn, there were always some pigs which were not getting the best diet for their stage of growth. "Batching provides a little tighter feeding window for pigs," Mike says.

In addition, having between 2,200 and 2,400 piglets in a uniform, same-age group allows them to compete against the big 5,000-sow U.S. operations, should they decide to sell their pigs rather than finish them. "It is a very marketable group of pigs," says Mike.

Initially, a larger than expected cycling window was one of the biggest challenges when getting the sows into batches. Mike explains that they used Regumate and the sows cycled in a much wider range than he expected. Now that they have been on the system for over a year, with a Wednesday weaning, he says that 90 per cent of the sows are bred on Monday and Tuesday.

They induce their sows, so Mike says someone is there for about 90 per cent of the farrowings. He hasn't seen a big change in farrowing results, which were monitored pretty closely before switching to the batch system, but he has noticed that the overall health of the animals seems to be improving as the entire farrowing barn is run on an all-in all-out system.

"I just love it. I can't imagine going back," says Dennis Aarts, who operates a 250-sow farrow-to-finish herd with his parents, John and Rika, near St. Marys, and who converted to a batch system in November 2007. Aarts says they had been interested in it for a while, but had a lot of questions about how to get started.

When circovirus cut their production, they were breeding extra sows in order to maintain the number of finishing pigs. "Once we got through the worst of it, we had a lot of extra sows and started culling really heavily," he says. Fewer sows in the barn opened up an opportunity to start a program of batch farrowing because they had extra crate space to get it started.

"Our goal is to raise as many top-notch pigs out of the farrowing crates and put as many finished pigs out the door as possible," says Dennis. They saw the advantages in the system and decided that they would do what was required to make it work.
Time management was the biggest reason for the Aarts to switch to this system, explains Dennis. "We have a fresh market produce operation in the summer, which is very busy." Batch farrowing allows them to schedule their workload more efficiently. Before using the batch system, they had sows farrowing any time, so they were not always on hand. "I find we attend more farrowings this way," he says. "Batch farrowing allows us to produce larger batches of pigs while maintaining the advantages of a smaller operation," he adds.

Dennis points out that the ability to wash farrowing rooms more effectively is another benefit of the batch system. Working in older facilities, they would often have to wash part of a room while there were still sows and piglets in it. The farrowing rooms are now all-in, all-out, so they do a better job of getting the rooms clean, he explains.

Getting the sows into batches initially was the biggest hurdle, says Dennis. They would bring the gilts in to the breeding barn and expose them to a boar for a few days before they wanted to start breeding the majority of the sows. The Aarts use Regumate to keep the females cycling in groups.

Concentrating the workload
At Clarion Genetics, near Drayton, Kent Martin and his father, Clare, started batch farrowing their breeding stock herd two and a half years ago when they built a new sow barn. They have 180 sows and batch farrow every two weeks.

For the Martins, labour was a key issue. They did not have enough work to hire someone full-time, and the batch system allows them to concentrate the work into bigger chunks. They can then hire a part-timer to help out during these busy times. The workload will differ in every operation, says Kent. "If you can get by, you still need a lot of labour on certain days." Kent explains that the heavy workload has moved to three days every two weeks. He gets help on the busy days, and then manages the rest of the time on his own.

Disease control is another big reason to go the batch farrowing route, says Kent. While the nursery is still located in the same barn as the sows, having the rooms all-in, all-out helps keep the pigs healthier.

Improving the ability to cross-foster litters was perhaps one of the biggest benefits. "I now average bigger litters weaned and maximize each sow that way," he says.  The majority of his sows now farrow close enough together that he can do more effective cross-fostering.

Previously, Martin had bred about 75 per cent of his sows using natural matings. That number has been reduced to about 40 per cent. He is happy with the way increasing the amount of artificial insemination (A.I.) has worked in his herd, but he still keeps a few boars to use as back up. "There will always be sows that wean earlier or later than you prefer, especially in a four-week cycle,"' says Martin.

Batch farrowing is not for everyone and it does have challenges.  Dr. Brent Jones of MacDougald and Jones, a Stratford-based veterinary consultancy  has two clients who have recently gone to a batch system. Jones says batching requires a higher level of management and is less flexible than a continuous farrowing system. Even producers who use 100 per cent AI need to keep enough boars around to stimulate large numbers of sows and to detect heats. Hormones used to manipulate heat cycles are an extra cost.

Jones points out that batch systems may make disease elimination easier because they produce breeding and farrowing breaks. Because producers are better able to fill entire nurseries at a time, it also makes all-in, all-out systems out of systems that were once continuous flow. Jones says a four-week batch with five groups of sows makes the most efficient use of crate space.

Hardier piglets off the sow
Darren Frey of Drayton converted his 250-sow farrow-to-finish operation to a batch system because of outbreaks of circovirus and then PRRS in the fall of 2007. Beginning in February 2008, they took a three-week breeding break and used varying weaning lengths to get the sows into batches.  "We didn't have a strict weaning schedule – we focused on getting the sows into batches," says Frey. They now wean piglets at 24 to 28 days, which results in hardier pigs coming off the sow and reduces the need for treating sick piglets in the nursery.

Frey was determined to keep production up to fulfill a contract with Quality Meat Packers. "Our production now is higher than before and we are marketing more pigs than we have in some time," he says. Frey has switched from mostly natural matings to 75 per cent A.I. While this has added some costs, overall the benefits he has seen from the batch system exceed any extra costs. "I think there are more pros than cons for batch farrowing," he adds.

Greg Haskett recently set up a new 540-sow operation near Woodstock. He went the batch route in order to produce a larger sized group for marketing weaners. Dealing with the challenges of new facilities, new genetics and new feed made getting started tough, says Haskett. However, the system is starting to flow more smoothly and he appreciates the fact that they can focus their resources on specific jobs at specific times.

Haskett had originally hoped to use four-week batches, but he did not have enough labour at weaning. Breeding also proved to be challenging because his facilities were not set up to breed 55 to 60 sows at once. He was forced to spend time moving a lot of sows around and so he switched to a two-week batch.

 "As vets, our job is to suggest batch farrowing as another tool available to achieve the goals of a producer's herd," says Dr. Kevin Vilaca, of Maitland Veterinary Professional Corporation. Vilaca says that, in his experience, producers who go the batch route tend to fall into one of two categories. Those with 200 to 300 sows often choose it for convenience, while managers of herds with 600 to 700 choose it to produce large groups of pigs to fill a room or barn. Buyers are looking for larger groups that are all of one age.

From a veterinarian's perspective, batch farrowing provides benefits for controlling disease. "We're trying to get a larger group coming through less often to get diseases under control," says Vilaca. Even "small" bugs can make nurseries less efficient if pigs are continually passing illness through the system. "Batching allows us to eliminate some of the bugs we otherwise wouldn't be able to," he adds.

Getting started on a batch system can seem daunting and it is easy to get caught up in the negatives, says Vilaca. He recommends that producers thinking of making a switch to batches talk to someone who has done it successfully. "There are solutions out there. For each herd, the solutions might be slightly different." 

He also finds it helpful to focus on a goal. "Where do you want to be?" Producers who are having problems with numbers, management or health who want to make it a priority can make it work, he adds. BP