Martin Stahl hopes that, long after his children have become grandparents, their colony’s first hog barn will still safely and efficiently produce big batches of healthy hogs.

Late in November, just before their new gilts were set to arrive, members of the newly-established Whitesand Colony offered fellow producers and industry partners an afternoon tour of their 600-sow barn.

Building designer Dale Salomons (yes, he is one of Marvin’s brothers) said Martin had come to him about 18 months earlier with blueprints for a 12,000-square-foot concrete building that would involve some features not tried before in the swine industry. Under Martin’s watchful eye, Dale and yet another Salomons brother, Bruce, set out to create a building that would keep the pigs inside happy and healthy regardless of rain, snow, hail, tornado or anything else Mother Nature could throw at it – and it would mimic some of her secrets.

Groundwork was done in the fall of 2017, concrete was poured in spring and, on November 26 the barn was ready to receive the 220 gilts that would form the foundation of their new herd.

Most obvious to visitors attending the open house are the oddly shaped ventilation chimneys in the ceiling and the slats that open to ventilation tunnels along the outside walls. Couple that system with a solidly-sealed roof that has no attic, and you have resolved one of the main issues affecting the lifespan of a hog barn, said Martin.

The self-regulating chimneys are common in chicken barns, but the Whitesand Colony is likely the first hog barn in North America to use them, said Dale and Bruce.

The chimneys pull fresh air down from outside, while a recirculating fan at the base of each chimney pulls air up from inside the barn. The fan sits at the bottom of a pair of pucks that open and close automatically to regulate heat in the room by mixing and redistributing air as required.

When it’s hot outside, wall vents open and fans inside the tunnels kick on to help move more air. The big fans in the wall are fairly slow, but they’re 95 per cent efficient, said Martin.

“You know, you can have the best feed, the best management, the best genetics, the best of everything. If your ventilation system doesn’t work the way it should, you are stressing these animals,” he said.

“We are excited to see it go.”

While the ventilation system takes care of the pigs, it’s the roof itself that will ensure the building lasts for three or four generations, says Martin. Instead of an attic with collection points that rot over time through the effects of heat, humidity and ammonia, the roof on Whitesand’s hog barn is comprised of a layer of hollow-core concrete, sitting on steel-reinforced concrete beams. A hefty layer of Styrofoam is fixed to the top of the concrete, and the Styrofoam in turn is covered by a 60-millimetre rubber membrane. A layer of gravel holds it all down. One visitor from a nearby colony joked that Whitesand could grow a garden on the roof of its hog barn.

Water drained from the roof is collected and piped to the 12-million-gallon reservoir that supplies the dairy and hog barns, said Martin. The reservoir draws from a groundwater supply that averages 85 million gallons a year, refilling with the spring melt. Despite the extremely hot and dry conditions during the past summer, the supply was more than adequate for both barns, said Martin. An analyst system treats the water going into both barns, said Dale.

Precast walls inside the building have a polished finish that will make them easier to keep clean and less likely to harbour pathogens and other contaminants. Inside the gestation room, Bruce demonstrates the electronic feeding and sorting system connected with a series of open pens where sows can languish between parities.

A teasing boar is housed in a sealed pen a few steps from the feeder, where a scanner reads the chip in each sow that comes over for a visit.

The ear chip allows the feeder to recognize each animal and provide a mix of feed and water as she comes in, said Bruce. The system makes note of sows that have been visiting the teasing boar or that are close to farrowing. It marks and sorts them as they leave the feeder, putting those that are in heat or due to farrow into a hallway from which they can be moved to the appropriate room, he said.

The herdsmen responsible for the room carry handheld devices to manually control the feeder and monitor the status of each animal.

Genetics supplier Art Goelema says the feeder will send an alarm if one of the animals has not been coming to eat, but it’s up to the herdsmen to watch for lameness or other signs of trouble. Goelema says he is particularly impressed with the lighting system, optimized for comfort and to encourage the sows to cycle. LED tubes that light the room are timed to come on slowly in the morning, remain bright for 14 hours, and then slowly shut down at the end of the day.

He also chimed in with others who remarked on the strength and longevity of the roof.

“Some say it’s expensive, but it’s actually cheaper to build this way because it lasts a lifetime. If we ever get a tornado coming over Stettler, this would be the only building left standing – and the shop,” said Goelema.

The biggest issue in starting the herd will be training of 220 gilts that have been living in a big room and have never seen an electronic feeder, he said.

Once the herd is established, gilts can be trained in a smaller room where they can be introduced to the feeders without pressure from other animals. Martin says the new gilts, coming in batches of 50, will be hungry when they arrive, so the first thing they are going to do is look for something to eat. They will be able to see each other through the centre of the feeder, and it should take only two trips through for each animal to figure it out.

“You get them through the stomach. You have your handheld, you can operate the gate open or closed, you let her in, let her eat for five minutes and let her out again. She comes through the next morning and she’s trained,” said Martin.

The breeding room will house 70 boars, including 65 Genesus Durocs for the commercial herd and five purebred Landraces for the multiplier, says Goelema. All gilt replacements will come from within the foundation herd, he said.

Animals will be batch processed, with weaning every second Thursday and breeding by live cover on the following Monday.

Farrowing sows will be kept in double pens that have a small wall between the two batches of piglets. Upon weaning, the piglets will move to a nursery that expands with them as they grow, and then from there to the finishing room.

Goelema says he anticipates a high level of production from Whitesand, which split last year from the nearby Gadsby Colony. Gadsby has a good team that normally produces 30 to 31 pigs per sow per year, he said.

“They were phenomenal producers. This barn, they’re going to push pigs.”

Martin says Gadsby operates with gestation stalls and has not converted to loose housing. He would have preferred to continue with gestation stalls at Whitesand, because that makes it easier to control feed and manage individual sows. “

But if the consumer wants it this way, we’ll work with it this way. It’s the future, I guess. At the end of the day, they’ll still get their pork chop. It’s probably a better home than a lot of homeless people have.” •

— By Brenda Kossowan