Speaking at the Prairie Livestock Expo 2016 in December in Winnipeg, Dr. Tracy Gilson the Operations Manager of the University of Manitoba’s Glenlea Research Station says discoveries made through research are driving the success of agriculture in feeding growing numbers of people while using fewer inputs.

Dr. Gilson says the primary goal of agricultural research is to help farmers improve their efficiency and productivity. Agriculture would not exist without the discoveries.

“Some of the discoveries happened on farms, but a majority of those discoveries happened on research facilities just like the one we have here in Manitoba and others situated across Canada,” she said. “Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada first started with their research facilities. Under a controlled environment they were able to find techniques, technologies that would help the producers, once adopted, improve their bottom line.”

Dr. Gilson says whether talking about livestock research specifically, or about the productivity of the animal giving more output with fewer inputs and, in order to determine that, there needs to be research behind how farmers feed and house their animals. Another is the feed efficiency, the utilization of by-products.

“When we do research for our livestock industry we’re really thinking about making them more resilient to everything from market trends to changes in how livestock are raised and this helps them with their bottom line,” she said. Dr. Gilson says looking to produce more food and finding ways to be more productive in doing that is certainly a vital topic of conversation now.

Also speaking at the same conference in Winnipeg, Dr. Laurie Connor, the Head of the University of Manitoba’s Department of Animal Science says research conducted on behalf of Swine Innovation Porc indicates improvements in the design of slatted concrete flooring will improve the comfort and longevity of group housed gestating sows. To ease manure management most gestating sows in Canada are housed on slatted or partially slatted concrete floors.

As part of research conducted on behalf of Swine Innovation Porc researchers are working to improve the comfort of these sows and reduce lameness by optimizing the slat and gap widths.

Dr. Connor says after reproduction, lameness is the second highest cause for culling sows. “We determined basically that the ease with which the sow moves, or her gait, is least affected by flooring which has a slat width of four inches and a gap width of three quarter inches. Both of those are just slightly below the actual industry standard at the moment,” she said. “Our focus is looking at the behaviour of the animal in pens now that are outfitted with two floorings, the standard as well as this slightly smaller slat and gap combination, looking at their postures at the beginning of gestation when they first go in there and after they’ve been in there for 10 weeks before they come out to farrowing.”

Also, she says are there changes in the way in which they move their so called gait score. Are there changes in various aspects that are indicators of lameness and of comfort for those sows?

“One of the things that we are also able to look at is actually their feet, the soles of their feet as well as the sides and the claws. That is very revealing about the harshness of the concrete flooring on the sows,” said Dr. Connor. “I anticipate a final report with information producers can use by next summer.” •

— By Harry Siemens