Yorkshire pig farmers are renowned worldwide for not pulling any punches and producer Ian Broumpton was in fine voice when this author visited him recently on his farm near Beverley, East Yorkshire.

Never a fan of red tape, Ian was sounding off at the latest imposition forced up on him. “I have to go on a rat baiting course in order to buy poison, yet the man in the street can simply walk into a garden centre and buy the stuff over the counter – just plain stupid,” complained Ian.

Ian is a fiery guy with strong views and this no doubt has helped him survive many years as a relatively small producer, by today’s standards. This was recognized recently as Ian was delighted to be selected as a finalist in UK’s Pig World’s 2015 National Pig Awards. Ian runs 300 sows along with his son Dan assisted by livestock technician Chris and also farms 50ha / 120 acres of arable, which grows wheat and barley. The farm has all its own arable machinery but much of it is in need of replacement and it’s likely that the arable work will be carried out by a contractor in the not too far distant future.

Ian is currently producing 26 pigs / sow / year and his productivity has always been excellent, which is helping him weather the current downturn in the UK pig industry. In the past this productivity was undoubtedly due to the excellent prolificacy of his Meidam female lines, which contained Meishan blood and were sourced from local breeding company ACMC. Sadly ACMC are no longer in business and so Ian has had to rethink his breeding policy. Currently he is using Rattlerow semen to produce gilts and in fact the first Rattlerow slaughter progeny are also just coming through.

Ian is using a crisscross breeding policy using F2s and some would argue that the F2 loses out on litter size, but then again with only 300 sows it’s hard to justify keeping purebred sows to breed F1s. Ian is also evaluating JSR genes and has been using some JSR semen. The JSR 900 sire line has had good reports and Ian has found the progeny grow well, but the jury is still out regarding FCR.

Ian changed his farrowing system from a three weekly batching system to a two weekly one, to fit in with his new Warkup farrowing house, built in 2015 which has 12 crates. The house is fully slatted (why did we ever bother with straw) and features both heat pads and lamps .Ian’s business policy is to fund expansion with 50 per cent from profits and 50 per cent from the bank, which keeps borrowings at a sensible level. Over the last seven years Ian’s new buildings have cost him £400,000, a considerable sum of money for a 300 sow unit.

Feeding the lactating sows is carried out by hand rather than by machine, with feed being built up to a maximum of 8kg / day. This is more labour intensive but Ian feels it is well worth it, to get the best from his lactating sows. Enzaprost (prostaglandin) is used on the sows, along with 0.5ml of Reprocin, to speed farrowing.

Ian “lives” in the farrowing house, day and night, when its farrowing time – his good results bear testimony to his excellent results – plus he still milks colostrum from some sows to give to the smaller newborns, a policy that’s been in place for many years. Ian’s other farrowing houses have 10 crates each and another holding, 22 sows, which was in a former life a pre-fabricated bungalow, a number of which were built after WWII to replace bombed out houses. These got condemned for human habitation back in the 1970s but made excellent pig accommodation and are still going strong.

This farrowing house has solid floors, is straw bedded and very labour intensive. The upside is that this house doesn’t owe Ian anything – written off the books many years ago. Progeny from the old 22 pen house move to one nursery, whilst progeny from the new farrowing facility and the 10 crate houses move to a Warkup fully slatted nursery built in 2014. Pigs get moved every four weeks from the farrowing houses to the nursery/ flat decks, where they are penned in groups of about 120. Here the pigs are fed meal with 3000 ppm of zinc oxide. Thereafter they are transferred to a large Warkup finishing house built 6.5 years ago and kept in groups of 31. The finishing house is also fully slatted. Skov ventilation is fitted and the atmosphere in the house was first class. Feed to the finishers is delivered automatically from a bulk bin outside the house. Crystal Spring feeders have been popular with Canadian producers for many years but have only been imported relatively recently to the UK, with Warkups fitting them as part of their package deal builds. The finishing barn also incorporates a tidy loading bay, which Ian is particularly proud of. The farm hasn’t room to finish all the progeny, hence pigs are shipped to two contract finishing units which take 1000 and 360 pigs. Ian is looking to extend his finishing house, as and when funds allow it to finish more pigs on site.

Finished pigs have a short trip of just 20km to the Cranswick slaughter house, outside Hull, where Ian is on a 14mmP2 contract and pigs are taken up to 100kg dead, although he is only paid up to 95kg. Male pigs are of course left entire as castration was phased out in the UK many years ago.

After weaning sows are given two inseminations, 24hours apart. The dry sows are housed in groups of 20 in large straw bedded pens with a scrape through passage. Ian feeds his sows by hand from a catwalk which runs the length of the building. The rest of the sows (85) are fed through an ESF system in one yard. Ian had both hips replaced a few years back, but his mobility is as good as it ever was, which is perhaps as well as getting to the catwalk involves climbing up a step ladder. Sows are routinely preg checked at four weeks, which is a typical procedure on UK units.

Vaccination programme:

Piglets: PRRS at 2 weeks, along with Circoflex & Mplus pac at weaning Gilts: Eryparv PRRS and Circoflex. All sows and gilts receive Gletvax

Ian’s pigs certainly looked healthy and very sound. Jokingly Ian commented that when things were going well the good health status doesn’t last long as pigs break out in “greasy pig” just to spoil things. Undoubtedly Ian’s closed herd policy has paid off given the healthy state of his pigs in general.

Manure can be a problem on some units. Here the new nursery and finishing house were built with deep pits which will take six months slurry( the legal requirement), whilst the newer farrowing house slurry is taken to a neighbour’s lagoon in winter and spread on neighbour’s land in the summer. “Slurry is great stuff” explained Ian. “We have no need to put any P and K on our land plus our nitrogen application is much reduced”.

Feed policy:

The home grown wheat and barley is sold to a small local feed company, Manor Farm Feeds. This is supplemented with other grains that Ian buys from local farmers and which are shipped into the mill. Manor Farm Feeds then supplies the bulk feed rations, with creep being purchased from elsewhere, with for farmers currently being the creep of choice.

The UK’s National Pigs Association (NPA) has a ladies group called Ladies in Pigs (LIPS). LIPS have a mobile kitchen which tours the kingdom vigorously promoting English pork and bacon. Ian is the male equivalent of LIPS, namely Man in Pigs (MIPS), in that he takes any opportunity to promote pork as vociferously as possible and is critical of the UK pig industry lead bodies for not doing enough for the industry that he loves so much. “We currently have a ‘pulled pork’ campaign, but that’s not enough,” complained Ian. “Supermarkets should be selling more pork burgers and more pork should be sold in fast food outlets, to compete with chicken. Pork is an ideal meat to be used in curries and more could be done with this type of meal. I even hate the word ‘pork’ and it’s time we came up with another name for pig meat- I am currently working on that one, as it happens!”

Ian might be approaching 60 but his enthusiasm shows no sign of slowing down and if we had just a handful of producers who showed the same drive and commitment to farming pigs as Ian does then the English pig industry would be in a far better place than it is currently. •

— By Norman Crabtree