Pig Fattening Project Near Kaiapoi

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30302, 30 November 1963, Page 6

Pig Fattening Project Near Kaiapoi

One of the biggest all-meal pig fattening units in Canterbury is located about two miles from Kaiapoi on the farmlet of Mr C. H. Johnson and his wife, Mrs M. J. Johnson. The fattening house built by Mr Johnson himself to the design of Mr J. Graham, advisory officer to the South Island District Pig Council, will hold up to 280 pigs at a time. A type of house of which there are several in Canterbury and the West Coast, it incorporates features designed to ensure the maximum comfort and warmth for the pigs and the minimum of work for the farmer.

Mr Johnson formerly farmed a 137-acre dairying property running 57 milking cows on Pines Beach road. He gave this up after 19 years for health reasons and, in search of a less arduous occupation, was advised to look at the possibility of pigs. Less than two years ago he acquired a four and three- ' quarter acre property comi prising broom-covered sand ■i hills north of Kaiapoi and .'called in Mr Graham to help plan and supervise the unit. Eventually Mr Johnson will have a farrowing house as well as a fattening house, and the farrowing house is now in course of construction. The fattening house has been in use since last March and since then 210 pigs have been marketed and another 90 are at present being fattened. Already , there is every indication that the enterprise will be a sound economic proposition. The fattening house, con- | taining 16 pens—eight on I either side of a central race I —is built of hollow' concrete I blocks with the side walls 1 being 4ft 6in high and the iron roof reaching a height of 9ft Bin at the apex. The pens are each 12ft deep and Bft 6in wide. At the rear of each pen is a raised bed sft 4;n deep and Bft 6in wide. It is built on a concrete base w'ith hollow cinder blocks on - top, then a thin layer of plaster with a glass-like finish. There is a 4in step i down from the bed on to a ' grating-covered drain, which ■ runs down the length of each side of the shed, with a fall of about 20 inches over that distance, to a common sump. This underground drainage system is one of the features of the shed and is a key to the small amount of labour involved in keeping the shed clean and the hygenic conditions under which the pigs are living. The rest of the pen area is occupied by a trough behind the piping railing along the front and a concrete area, which slopes gently down- ■ wards towards the drain, i Because the pigs in the bouse ; are on a wholly meal diet. ; access to water is important ' and automatic drinkers are I located above the drain so • that any overflow goes dirI ectly into it. J Attention has been given to | insulation of the house and - [under the iron roof there is three inches of sawdust on

top of builders’ paper and then sacking. Panels of transparent perspex material in the roof let. in the natural light and there are ventilators in the ridge of the roof and along the eaves —the latter are hinged at the bottom to eliminate draughts and to give an even flow of air over the pens. The result is that the house is warm, light and airy without any objectionable smells. The beds are warm and dry and clean. In the whole of the nine months Mr Johnson has hardly had to do any cleaning of the beds. Actually he spends about a half-hour a day feeding his charges and about an hour removing manure from the front of the pens and hosing them down with a low pressure hose. The location of the grating-covered drain is such that most of the manure falls on to the gratings or can be readily hosed down on to them and the tramping action of the pigs themselves tends to force the droppings through the gratings into the drains so that the pigs help to keep the pens clean. At one stage Mr Johnson did not clean the pens out at all for a week, but the grating then tended to get blocked, but it does indicate the low labour requirement in cleaning. Later, when he has a high pressure water supply, he expects that the time taken to clean down the pens will be cut in half. A significant result of the drainage system is that the pens are quite dry and this means that there is no footrot problem. In the nine months that he has been operating the house, using all bought-in pigs, Mr Johnson has had little trouble with disease, only about seven or eight pigs having had to be treated. Within three weeks of bringing the shed into use last March, there were 210 pigs inside. Pigs have been bought in mainly as weaners and slips. The pigs are fed on a ration of barley meal, meat meal, and tallow. At this time of the year the tallow part of the ration is down to Jib, or half of that in the winter. At the moment the pigs are receiving Ijlb of feed a day. for which they are showing a daily weight gain of more than 1 lb. Initially the bought-in pigs, used to milk feeding,

take a little time to adjust themselves to the all-meal diet with water, but Mr Johnson hopes that when he is breeding his own pigs and the piglets are introduced to meal feeding and water early in their life, this will be overcome in part.

The pigs going through the house, which are all marketed as baconers, are carried through to about 1401 b dressed weight. Mr Johnson favours the Landrace-Large White cross, because of its proportion of meat to fat. In the Kaiapoi fattening house the pigs look contented and happy. Through the winter the temperature in the house varied from about 65 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit, which Mr Graham says is about the ideal. Evenness of temperature is most important for good growth rates and feed conversion.

Barley meal is now delivered to the farmlet in bulk and stored in a silo. At present the feed is fed out on to the bed in each pen by the bucket, but eventually Mr Johnson hopes to have a trolley to take it along the race. If Now the sump containing 2000 gallons of manure and urine is pumped out about once a month. Eventually Mr Johnson hopes to have a tank on wheels and to use the material to irrigate and manure the sandhills. If all goes well it is expected that the farrowing house will be ready for use early next year. It will comprise a series of 14 units, on the round house system, the piglets having access to a light for warmth. But even with these units in full operation it is not thought that they will provide more than about half of the intake into the fattening shed, which is expected to be turning out about 800 to 1000 pigs a year. Between the fattening and farrowing house, which will also be used to hold pigs until they can be taken into the fattening house, there will be a store and administrative centre for the farm. Mr Johnson, with the help and advice of Mr Graham, has so far done all the construction work himself, and is now building the farrowing house and store, but he may have this roofed by a builder. The fattening house, for materials alone, including the drinking arrangements, cost about £9OO.