Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption Are Undermining America

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Shields Jr. RG, Mahan DC, and Graham PL. Changes in swine body composition from birth to 145 kg. J. Anim. Sci. 1983; 57:43-54. Almond B. Water: optimizing performance while reducing waste. 2002; Proceedings 46th annual North Carolina Pork Conference. Raleigh: North Phillips, PA, Fraser D, and Thompson BK. The influence of water nipple flow rate and position and room temperature on sow water intake and Carolina State University. Available at: URL: http://mark.asci.ncsu.edu/ncporkconf/2002/almond.htm. Accessed Jan 5, 2005.

Even the best feeders are only vessels. Keep in mind that pigs get the most out of a feeder into which the right food is put. Pigs, like many animals, prefer a varied diet. Ideally, you shouldn’t have to give your pigs any supplements; they should get all the vitamins and nutrients from the food you provide. They also need clean water with their food — a good reason to make two of these troughs and fill the second with water. What You’ll Need

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Mroz Z, Jongbloed AW, Van Diepen JThM, Vreman K, Keeme PA, Jongbloed R, Lenis NP, and Kogut J. Excretory and physiological consequences of Klopfenstein C, D’Allaire S, and Martineau G. What sows have to say about water intake. Proceedings Allen D. Leman Swine Conf., St. Paul:

General recommendations exist for the number of pigs per drinking device [15], but research to support these recommendations is limited. Researchers using 3- to 4-week-old weaned pigs reported a slight reduction in average daily gain and an increase in weight variation within pens of 16 pigs given access to one versus two nipple drinkers for 5 weeks post weaning [16]. Generally, for groups larger than 10 pigs in a nursery and 15 -20 pigs in a grow-finish facility, a minimum of two delivery devices is recommended [15, 17]. Drinker height is something I see wrong more often than right. With regular bite or nipple drinkers (which should be angled downwards at 45-60 from the horizontal) pigs prefer to drink with their heads angled slightly upwards, which means that the tip of the drinker should be at shoulder height. This also minimizes water wastage, Dr Bruce defined shoulder height as 16 x Wt 0.33 - this will give it in centimetres as shown in Table 1. The table also shows shoulder width for pigs from 5kg to 130kg. This dimension should be taken into account when determining the width of a feeder space or trough length for liquid feeding systems. We normally used 1.1 times shoulder width for each feeding space. In contemporary production facilities, decisions must be made concerning all of the above. In addition, the costs of water acquisition, and the storage and disposition of wasted water has led to an increased desire to better understand the water availability needs of pigs.

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Consider the likely range of products you may use as the viscosity of materials will impact on choice of pumps, (eg positive displacement or centrifugal). Turner SP, Edwards SA, and Bland VC. The influence of drinker allocation and group size on the drinking behaviour, welfare and production of growing

Take samples for all feed ingredients delivered; some co-products can show high variability in dry matter content and nutritional value. Samples should be analysed for dry matter content and if necessary for nutritional composition. These values should be used to adjust feed formulations and control the dry matter content of the final diet. Dry matter content is important to intake and growth performance and can affect pig health if too low. The Flying Piggy Bank is an allusion to the phrase when pigs fly, a figure of speech used to humorously describe something that is thought to be impossible or will never happen. It is a useful item for Expert Mode players, who lose 75% of their coins upon death, and Master Mode players, who lose 100% of their coins, rather than 50%, due to its ability to allow a player to deposit their coins at will, regardless of their location. Take advice from experienced pig nutritionists before purchasing new ingredients, particularly liquid co-products as there may be nutritional and storage issues to consider (deliveries can often be in the region of 28 tonnes).

Flooring is also a critical part of the farrowing pen and researchers at CRB in Scotland measured piglets feet and compared them with the dimensions of slatted floor panels used in the industry. Many of these led to injury and the CRB work was instrumental in defining standards for such floors leading to much better products. Another range of materials which can be used in liquid feed systems are unripe cereals such as Corn Cob mix, crimped cereals and legumes and “humid maize” which is in common use in some Water:feed ratios for liquid feeding systems typically range from 2.5:1 [9] to 3.5:1 [10]. Recently, water: feed ratios ranging from 1.78:1 to 2.79:1 for pigs weighing from 40 to 250 pounds and fed dry feed ad libitum have been reported [11]. The lowest reported water:feed ratios were with wet/dry feeders and bowl drinkers whereas gate-mounted nipple drinkers had the highest ratios. With similar performance, this suggests that the major cause of differences in water:feed ratios between the various drinking devices is due to differences in water wastage, not differences in the amount consumed.

MWPS. Midwest Plan Service. Swine breeding and gestation facilities handbook. MWPS-43. Ames: Iowa State University; 2001. Li Y, and Gonyou HW. Water intake and wastage by grower/finisher pigs at nipple drinkers. 2004; Available at: URLhttp://adminsrv.usask.ca/psci/ Anyone setting up a liquid feeding system will be classified as an “on-farm mixer of animal feed stuffs”, and accordingly will need to be registered with the local Trading Standards office under Statutory Instrument No. 1872, “Feeding Stuffs (Establishments and Intermediaries) Regulations 1999”. Under this legislation,Trading Standards are required to inspect the premises and examine mixing facilities, equipment, processes and quality control. Olsson O, and Andersson T. Biometric considerations when designing a valve drinking system for growing-finishing pigs. Acta Agric. Scan. 1985; Water:feed ratios decrease as pigs grow [11]. For example, in two experiments, water:feed ratios with gate-mounted nipple drinkers were 3.35:1 for 40 to 55 lb pigs, declining to 2.27:1 and 2.58:1 for 209 lb pigs. When pigs were given water only in the feeding trough using a commercially available wet/dry feeder, water:feed ratios declined from 2.11:1 to 1.50:1 and when pigs were offered water using a bowl drinker the ratios declined from 2.11:1 to 1.77:1. Recent on-farm data [M.C. Brumm, unpublished data] supports the conclusion that water:feed ratios decline as pigs grow, with a ratio as low as 1.5:1 common in facilities that use wet/dry feeders or stainless steel bowl drinkers in late finishing. Assuming similar water:feed ratios for both barrows and gilts, it follows that barrows drink more water than gilts [12] since barrows eat more feed per day than gilts in mid to late finishing [13]. Pigs fed meal diets drink more water than pigs fed pelleted diets [14], reflecting similar water:feed ratios and differences in feed conversion efficiency.Ensure that any food splashing is cleaned up regularly and tank surfaces are washed to prevent growth of moulds and the attraction of rodents, wild birds or insects. Liquid feed mixing areas should have drainage points to allow them to be regularly pressure washed. Reese DE, Thaler RC, Brumm MC, Lewis AJ, Miller PS, and Libal GW. Nebraska and South Dakota Swine Nutrition Guide. Nebraska Cooperative With on-farm data logging, producers are recording water usage every 5-15 minutes. Figure 1 shows the record of water usage every 5 minutes (blue lines) in three finishing facilities in Nebraska using three types of water delivery devices for a one-week period in May, 2004. Notice the distinct differences in disappearance patterns. In the top graph, water disappearance gradually increases during the day, peaking around 1800 hrs. At Farms 2 and 3, the patterns are closer to those reported by researchers [4, 6]. However, at all three farms, the peak in water usage occurred in late afternoon/early evening. These on-farm results agree with others who reported that the maximum drinking activity for grow-finish pigs occurred from 1700 to 2100 hr [7, 8]. Therefore, water delivery systems must be sized with the expectation that peak demand will occur in mid- to late-afternoon for grow-finish pigs. In addition to drinking water needs, water must be available for cleaning and other uses. As swine facilities have grown in size, issues associated with sizing of water supply lines have become more critical.