A production manager with Olymel specializing in animal handling and training suggests, by taking action to minimise the stress faced by hogs, livestock handlers will be able to move those animals much faster and more efficiently. "Tips and Tricks for Working with Hogs; Practical Strategies for Handling Hogs" was among the topics discussed last week as part of Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2025 in Saskatoon.
Kevin Brooks, a production manager specializing in animal handling and training with Olymel West in Humboldt, says, whether it's family stress, financial stress or job stress, everyone deals with stress and it's the same with the pigs, so if handlers can take that into consideration, they'll have a lot more success.
Quote-Kevin Brooks-Olymel West:
I think one of the biggest mistakes we see or one of the opportunities or challenges, depending on how you look at it is we try to bring too many animals so we send a mixed message to those animals.We bring too many up, they group up in a big group. Again, we want to keep those animals flowing, whether it's to a farrowing house or onto a truck or moving down to a nursery or grow facility so stepping back, letting them go around us, giving that pig a chance to observe.
They're curious animals too so if we can give them a chance or a second to feel like they're safe, they can smell and understand their surroundings, they'll go forward and they will advance.We naturally want to herd animals because we're naturally a herding people and gathering people so we want to gather food and sort so we have to just slow down.
We have to just stop, back up, release the pressure.I think, anytime we've left a gate open in a barn and we turn around two minutes later, all of those pigs have escaped.What happened there? We weren't chasing them but they were curious and wanted to go.I think if we take that kind of though process into moving, again a win win.
Brooks says times are changing and changes made over the past few years in the way pigs are moved have benefited both the pigs and the people.He suggests the biggest mistake is people who worked with pigs for a long time have always done things one way and are not prepared to try new approaches.
Source : Farmscape.ca