The first new hog barn in the last seven years held an Open House on March 4, at the Suncrest Colony just off the intersection of highways 59 and 52 near Steinbach, MB.

Colony Hog Boss Bob Kleinsasser describes it as an 800 sow farrow to 80 pounds using open group housing with 125 sows per group at 28 square feet per sow.

“Our sow barn is shot, 50 years old, and we are 500 sows, farrow to finish right now,” he said. “We’ll finish as many as we can and the rest we’re selling as Isoweans. Once we get this new barn a little bit paid down, it is not cheap to build, we’ll build a new finisher barn, too.”

When asked how much the new sow barn costs the Colony, way too much, he said. The exchange rate really put a wrench into the cost of the barn, adding 20 per cent or more than what they had figured the day they started moving dirt back in May 2015. “

Most of the equipment and materials come from the U.S., even if it comes from overseas, like our Big Dutchmen electronic sow feeders, still need payment in American dollars,” said Kleinsasser. “We’ll sell the Isoweans, paid in American dollars, and that is why we’re doing it otherwise we’d look for a barn to finish them here.”

While preferring to finish them in Manitoba, it is impossible to find a finisher barn here because Maple Leaf has tied up every available barn in the country.

Kleinsasser says right now their plans are to ship the Isoweans in bigger batches of 1,200 piglets through Provista’s Proline Pork Marketing company, meaning they have to collect four weeks-worth of pigs to make one truckload of 1,200. It costs $2,000 freight to go to the U.S. whether 500 pigs or 1,200, the freight is the same.

While some companies are converting existing barns to the new required group housing, Suncrest Colony felt it may work better with a new building where they can start from scratch.

It seems that proper planning is why this Colony was able to build new, well not exactly new production because they’re actually rebuilding their old sow barn. “Seven years ago we built a new lagoon, a manure storage that included enough animal units to almost double our production,” said the Suncrest hog boss. “If you have the animal units, manure storage you can actually build a new facility.”

However, if a producer wants to increase the number of animals and doesn’t have the animal units to apply that manure to the land, it’s impossible.

“If you have 300 sows for example and you want to go to a thousand sows, you can’t build because you have no manure storage,” said Kleinsasser. “We lost 100’s and 100’s of producers because their barns were too old, and didn’t have the manure storage to increase production. The province will not give the permit for the lagoon to do so.”

In Suncrest Colony’s case, they also have 9,300 acres of land to apply and incorporate the manure. In addition to the hogs, this colony is well diversified running a 22-cow dairy, 20,000 layer chickens, and 20,000 breeder broilers. As Kleinsasser says it takes lots of money to build a brand new hog barn, and with the exchange rate, 20 per cent more than a year ago. •

— By Harry Siemens