Easton
The Inside Of Your Average Day Pig Barn
Easton
English 8
With over 23.5 million pigs in the state of Iowa the hog barn have changed a lot over the years. With new technology and new medications the pig barn has become a lot more easy to run. There are many types of pig barns such as: the nursery, the finisher,
The wean-to-finish is a barn that helps the pigs grow from the nursery stage (six-eight weeks old) to the finishing stage (16-17 weeks old) all in one barn.
The pens in a pig barn can vary from small to big. Some pens can be all run together. Inside a pen you usually have components: the gates, the waters, and the feeders. The gates can be either metal or plastic. Some barns have gates that you can see through and the pigs can see you; others have gates that the pigs have to look up to see youbut they can’t look out of. The waters can be in either two places in the middle of the pin or in the feeder. In the feeder is called a wet dry feeder. That means the pigs get food and water at the same time and sometimes they get their medications through the feeders. The waters can have two different approaches nipple bar set up which is a bar that has little pieces that the pigs drink of and the water comes out of which is used mostly when they are young which makes it like they are drinking from the sow, or a pan with water that constantly flows all the time. Pen size can vary based on the layout and the number of pigs you can have in that barn. The most common size is 8.85 feet by 5.91 feet that has a 14.5 by 10.25 inch feeder in the middle (Wean to Finish Guidelines) .
A wean-to-finish pig barn has a lot of advantages over a nursery or a finisher. It keeps the pigs in the same environment for their whole life. A stressed out pig is not good or safe for anyone in its area of living space. The life cycle of a pig starts when they are born at 114 days of being in the sow; they usually weigh about two to three pounds at birth. Then at 21 days old they are moved from their mom who fed them and now they are weaned and they usually weigh about 13 to 15 pounds. Next they go to the wean-to-finish barn. They come in at 13-15 pounds and come out big and ready to turn into bacon at 280-300 pounds and brought right to the packing plant (Life Cycle of a Market Pig). Inside the barn all they do is eat,sleep, relieve themselves, drink water, and die. Some pigs can get really sick with things like strep, prrs (pers), and influenza. To keep the pigs as healthy as possible farmers use something biosecurity to keep outside diseases from coming into a barn. Things like coveralls, latex covers, and different boots are all things pig farmers use to keep their pigs healthy. It keeps the pigs from getting diseases if the farmer has been in other barns. Most barns now have a line to keep the dirty boots on one side and the pigs on the other.
Pig barns nowadays have way more tech than they did 20 years ago with more monitors and cameras pig barns have turned into a system of easy caring for them. The most common type of warning system is the Agri Alert 800 EZK which warns owners when something goes wrong in the barn it would call you. The newest one is the Barntalk Gateway that has many sensors that all connect to the WIFI in the barn. Barntalk will text you on minor things and call you on major things. According to Chris Bohr on Barn Talk.com “the inconsistent signal was the biggest issue with Agri-Alert. You could never confidently know whether the alarm was going to call you or not. The peace of mind has been the biggest value with BarnTalk.” He loves how barn talk will alert him on anything that happens in his barn; a barn temp. jumps up or down or water consumption goes down. With Barn Talk you could get many different sensors that can monitor different things in the barn like temp, water, and outside temp.
The pig market can change over time so can the barns but at the core all pig farmers have the same goal to raise safe and healthy pigs to go from their barn to your table.
Works Cited
Fangman, Thomas J. "Wean to Finish Advantages and Implications a Case Study." Porkgateway, Fangman, porkgateway.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/wean-to-finish-advantages-and-implications-a-case-study1.pdf. Accessed 21 Feb. 2024.
Pork Checkoff, National Pork Board, porkcheckoff.org/pork-branding/facts-statistics/life-cycle-of-a-market-pig/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2024.
Samuel, Ryan. "Comparing Feeder Types in the Wean-to-Finish Barn." South Dakota State University Extension, South Dakota Board of Regents, 22 Apr. 2022, extension.sdstate.edu/comparing-feeder-types-wean-finish-barn. Accessed 21 Feb. 2024.
Samuel, Ryan. "Wean-to-finish production systems evolve for healthy pigs." Tri-State Neighbor, AgUpdate, 21 Feb. 2018, agupdate.com/tristateneighbor/news/livestock/wean-to-finish-production-systems-evolve-for-healthy-pigs/article_81013d3c-10dc-11e8-8731-afcec4981b3c.html. Accessed 21 Feb. 2024.
Samuel, Ryan. "Wean-To-Finish Production Systems Evolve for Healthy Pigs." Farm Journal's Pork, Farm Journal, Inc, 28 Oct. 2022, www.porkbusiness.com/news/hog-production/wean-finish-production-systems-evolve-healthy-pigs. Accessed 21 Feb. 2024.