Sow Housing

Today, I spoke at a conference about sow housing. It went really well and had a lot of people thank me for speaking and tell me I did a good job. It was pretty cool! This is the second time I've spoken at a conference, and I really do like it. I thought I'd share a few pictures from my presentation.

Here is a picture of stall housing for sows. These sows are all either pregnant or going to become pregnant soon. Each sow has her own space to keep her safe from the other sows. Sows fight a lot when they are mixed until they establish their pecking order. Right after they are weaned, they need time gain a little weight back after nursing a big litter. In individual stalls, we can feed them individually and can easily see if one of them is not eating because she is sick.

Once the sows are confirmed pregnant, about 5 weeks after being bred, they are moved to pen gestation. Below is a picture of sows that are pregnant in one of our sow units. We keep them in pens here. The barn is round, so the pens are pie shaped.

Here is another sow unit. This picture also has pregant sows in pens.

Here are gilts (first time pregnancy) that were at my farm at the time. Unfortunately this barn burned down.

This is a personal favorite of mine. Isn't this pig so stinking cute?! She is about 200 days old, 300 lbs and is ready to get preggers.

This picture transferred kinda funny, but these are pigs that are almost ready to be weaned. They are about 20 days old and probably weigh close to 12 lbs. We keep sows in these individual stalls like this to help protect their babies.

Here is another sow with her babies. These pigs are probably closer to one week old.

Those are some of my pigs! My job is to oversee the people who take care of the sows and gilts in all of these areas. It really is a lot of fun and a great challenge.