Case Studies: Hog and Poultry Solutions

Thomas Livestock Case Study

In 2012, Thomas Livestock was in the planning phase for building a new 5500 head sow barn. The team planned on simply going with traditional gestation stalls since that is what they had in their current operations. They had never experienced a group sow housing design that reduced stress among sows and had production numbers as high as stall barns. Thomas Livestock's General Manager Tim Friedel had plenty of experience with group gestation pens, but every design he had managed or experienced was more stressful on the sow. Every time he had tried to mix animals, it resulted in a high level of fighting. The team was concerned with animal welfare in their barns and the ability to implement technology in their operations down the road. They were still open to group housing, but they had not yet found a viable solution.

Before settling on a gestation stall barn design, they decided to see how successful current group housing designs were, and they started traveling around the U.S. visiting different barns with different group housing systems. On these trips, they didn't come up with anything they were interested in, so they were just going to stick with their gestation stall plans.

Tunnel Ventilation at Pembrook Colony

In 2015, Harold Hofer of Pembrook Colony in Ipswich, SD was facing a few major challenges with their current turkey barns. In the middle of the summer, when it would reach temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind would quit moving in their curtain barns, the internal temperature quickly became too hot. Every year, they were losing birds throughout the summer because they could not regulate the temperature in the barn to cool the birds to a normal temperature.

Converting Stalls to Loose Sow at Pembina Colony

We often get asked to talk through the process of taking a stall barn and converting it to a loose housing barn, and for good reason! The process seems daunting, but in reality it is pretty painless if you plan ahead. Every barn conversion is different due to a number of factors including barn size, current and desired barn operations, temporary housing options, and a number of other factors. Providing a general outline of the conversion process is helpful, but we decided we could paint a clearer picture if we walked you through a recent conversion. 

In Mid-August of 2017 Pembina Colony contacted us asking what it would take to convert their sow barn to group housing. As with all conversion projects, we informed them that we would first have to visit the barn to see what they currently had, and then we could develop a plan from there.

Group Sow Housing Eagle Creek Colony

As it enters its 10th year of operation, we would like to highlight the building that set the group sow housing industry standard, the Eagle Creek Colony electronic sow feeding facility. The Eagle Creek barn is a 1,000 sow farrow to finish site located near Altamont, MB. It was designed using large-pen gestation and Nedap equipment and the year-to-year annual weaning in the facility is nearly 32 pigs/sow/year, which is above most conventional systems. It is a fully dynamic building with central separation. New Standard started designing the building in January 2007, and later began construction in April. The first animals were introduced to the barn in April 2008. The finisher barn was later completed in 2010.