“Pay day” is a good thing: the time when we reap rewards for our care and effort.
Loading animals for transport is the final step before pay day on most hog farms (semen sales being an obvious exception). A live, healthy animal has to walk onto a trailer at the farm and off the trailer at the other end to return value to the farm.
On too many farms, the sense of satisfaction and accomplishment for bringing animals to market = pay day is overshadowed by the stress and frustration associated with loading animals for transport.
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PRIZE AWARDED
One of the “F.X Aherne Prize for Innovation in Pork Production” winners at the January 2015 Banff Pork Seminar, addressed problems related to loading market hogs with some simple, inexpensive changes that could easily be applied on other farms.
Receiving the award for Heartland Pork LLC of Alpena, South Dakota, were Dave Uttecht and Greg Feenstra.
l. Greg Feenstra and r. Dave Uttecht of Heartland Pork LLC, Alpena, SD sporting F.X. Aherne Award jackets at 2015 Banff Pork Seminar.
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Following is the background and description of their innovation, the EZ Hog Tub, as provided by Dave Uttecht.
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EZ Hog Tub Description
We constructed two 2400 head finish barns utilizing a standard design including:
Large 100 head pens
Split pens so we could pre-sort pigs for market
A straight out alley to the dock
Load docks at trailer height for reduced transition
We assumed these would be great sites to load out market hogs but we were wrong. It was taking up to two hours to load a trailer and there was much stress on the pigs and people. After loading several market hog trailers and trying several different things we decided there must be a better way.
We viewed other finishing sites including those with:
Circular “working” tubs on the exterior of the building
Barns that diverted hogs through a pen to access the chute door
Barns that forced pigs to make a turn before the loading chute
All these designs performed better than what we were experiencing. However, we did not have space for a working tub, and we could not move the door.
We had been working with Nancy Lidster of DNL Farms Ltd. to train personnel on “Low Stress Pig Handling”. She was able to help us understand that all the shortcuts we had designed into the barn didn’t help and probably made things worse. We brainstormed and came up with several ideas that Greg Feenstra then took to the barn and created the EZ Hog Tub.
Existing gates from post “A” are opened to allow pigs to enter the last pen and exit the building. A stationary gate was added from post “A” and secured to the floor at “B”. A swing gate is attached to the end of this gate at “B”. Point “C” is an existing wall bracket to which we attached the second swing gate. The hogs flow from their pre-sort pen down the alley and into the pen with the gates. The hogs naturally flow to the bottom left corner of the pen, and are easy to capture by swinging the “B” gate. Once they are to the alley, we swing the “C” gate for the final stage to move pigs out of the barn.
The EZ Hog Tub helped us experience reduced stress on pigs and people during loading, faster load times, and lower plant losses with very little expense.
Dave Uttecht, Managing Partner
Heartland Pork, LLC
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LINE DIAGRAM of EZ HOG TUB – in lower left corner
This innovation is important to the industry because baulking at doorways is a fairly common problem.
Many things can encourage pigs to stop and baulk at transitions such as doorways: interference from the trucker, seemingly minor upsets during sorting, being followed too closely in the alley, etc. Handlers who are anxious or anticipating problems tend to unconsciously become more forceful and thereby increase the odds of hogs baulking. No matter what triggers the baulking, a handler working behind hogs in a narrow alley is not in a good position to restart movement if hogs stop.
How does the “EZ Hog Tub” reduce stress?
The handler doesn’t have to worry about hogs baulking at the doorway while moving hogs up in the alley. Hogs move from their pens down the alley to another pen before reaching the EZ Hog Tub and the door.
Hogs move from the alley into a wider area which gets them spaced out and frees up their movement.
The pen and gate configuration of the EZ Hog Tub lets the handler work where hogs can see him/her and use pigs’ circling behavior to set up a flow onto the trailer.
Rather than baulking, reluctant animals can turn around and check their options. They will usually leave willingly then.
Success and confidence in handlers make life better for both hogs and handlers.
Source: DNLFarms