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A SWINE PRODUCTION
OF ONE PEN FROM
G. W.
SYSTEM
BASED ON THE USE
BIRTH
TO MARKETING
1, 2
I). E. ORR, JR., ~ J. L. G O B B L E , V. •. HAZLETT,
R. A. ALDRICH AND E. J. P A R T E N H E I M E R
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park 16802
SI-IERRITT,
O T E N T I A L advantages of a farrow-top finish
system, in which pigs are raised from
birth to market in one pen as a litter unit,
have been cited by Charlick et al. (1968),
Jedele (1961) and Sainsbury (1967). Some
of these potential advantages are: less stress
on the pigs resulting in faster rates of gain
and less feed per unit of gain, decreased health
problems, less labor required per pig and fewer
scheduling problems. Sainsbury (1967) stated,
" I t is beyond dispute that if we aim to give
pigs a life free from stress we would rear them
in small groups, in sinai1 herds with little or
no changes in housing and management from
birth to slaughter." Charlick et al. (1968) in
a study of a farrow-to-finish system found
that pigs that were moved and mixed gained
more slowly than pigs raised from birth to
market in one pen as a litter. Teague and
Grifo (1961) reported that mixing pigs and to
a less extent, moving pigs during the growing
finishing period increased the feed requirement per unit of gain. Jensen et al. (1969)
found that "mixing litters at weaning had less
effect on gain and efficiency than did mixing
litters 4 weeks after weaning," the implication being that mixing litters had effects regardless of age.
This study was undertaken to evaluate a
farrow-to-finish system of swine management
in terms of gain and feed utilization by pigs
from birth to market.
Materials and Methods
Four consecutive trials were conducted with
trials starting in February I 1968, August,
1968, February, 1969 and August, 1969. Each
trial compared litters raised in one pen from
1 Approved by the Director, The Pennsylvania Agricultural
Experiment Station, No. 4068 of the Journal Series.
The authors extend their appreciation for the support of
this research by Agway, Inc., Syracuse, New York and by
Pennsylvania Department of Agricuiture.
a Present address: Department of Animal Husbandry, Michigan State University, East Lansing.
birth to marketing (designated as the farrowto-finish system) with litters farrowed in one
pen, moved to another pen after weaning, and
moved and mixed after a growing period
(designated as the conventional system).
The farrow-to-finish structure was a heated,
fully insulated, completely enclosed, mechanically ventilated building designed to maintain
a relatively controlled environment. The structure contained twenty 1.5 x 4.6 m pens. The
floor was solid concrete except 1.2 m at the
rear of the pen which was slatted. This
slatted area had slats 10.2 cm wide with 2.5
cm spacing between the slats. The heating and
ventilation system has been described by
Aldrich and Sherritt (1969). Fold-up guardrails and a hinged gate that made a 0.6 m
creep area across the front of the pen were
used during the farrowing and nursing periods.
The conventional farrowing unit was an
insulated, heated, mechanically ventilated,
solid floored wing of the main barn. Wood
shavings were used as bedding in this unit.
The farrowing wing contained 24 pens 2.4 x
2.7 m. Each pen was equipped with guardrails
and a corner brooder-area. Each pen had an
outside pen equal in size to the inside pen to
which the pigs had access during warm
weather.
The sows were of Hampshire, Yorkshire and
Berkshire breeding and were assigned to the
two management systems at each farrowing
period to equalize age, breed and farrowing
date and were managed the same in both units.
The sows were placed in their farrowing pens
approximately 4 days prior to farrowing and
remained with their litters until the litters
averaged 49 days of age, they were gradually
brought to a full-feed at a week after farrowing. Pigs were given continuous access to creep
feed starting at 5 days of age. Temperatures
between 23 to 27 C were maintained in the
farrowing units, and approximately 32 C was
maintained in the brooder or hover area.
709
JOURNAL OF ANIMAL SCIENCE, vol. 34, no. 5, 1972
710
S H E R R I T T E T AL.
Growing Period. In the farrow-to-finish
unit the sows were removed when their pigs
were 49 days of age. The pigs remained in the
pen in which they had been farrowed. The
guardrails and creep gates were folded against
the pen wall. A temperature of approximately
18.3 C was maintained.
In the conventional system the pigs were
weaned at an average age of 49 days by removing the sows. One week after weaning, the
pigs were moved as litter units to another
wing of the main barn where they were kept
together in a pen as a litter for the remainder
of the growing period. Each litter had a pen
inside the house 2.4 x 2.7 m and also had access to an open outside pen of equal dimensions in good weather (when the temperature
was continuously above freezing). This was
an unheated unit but bedding was used.
During the growing period, all pigs were
self fed a 16% protein diet. The growing period averaged 30 days in length.
Finishing Period. In the farrow-to-finish
unit the pigs were kept in the pen in which
they had been farrowed with one exception.
If a litter had more than 10 pigs, the litter
was reduced to 10 pigs and the extra pigs were
put together in one pen. Therefore, there was
one pen of mixed pigs resulting from each
trial in the farrow-to-finish barn.
The pigs used for the finishing period in the
conventional system consisted of six pens of
six pigs in each trial. These pigs were selected
at the end of the post-weaning period to be
representative of all pigs weaned in the conventional unit in that trial by sex, breed and
weight. The six lots were grouped by weight
and sex. Each group of six pigs had a pen
2.4 x 2.7 m inside the building and an open
pen of the same dimensions outside the building.
During the finishing phase, pigs were selffed a 14~o protein diet. Pigs were removed
from the finishing pens as they exceeded 86.2
kilograms. Each trial was terminated regardless of the weight of the pigs remaining to permit a 17-day clean-up and rest period of the
buildings between trials. Therefore the maximum time for a group in the farrow-to-finish
unit from the date the first sow farrowed until
the last pig was moved out was 165 days. The
data were analyzed by a least-square analysis
of variance technique (Harvey, 1968).
Results and Discussion
Farrowing to Weaning Period. The first
trial was complicated by problems in controlling the environment of the farrow-tofinish building, especially in terms of ventilation. Control and regulation of the ventilation
and heating of the building has been one of
the major concerns in using one building for
the different stages of swine production under
the different weather conditions prevailing.
This problem was eventually worked out so
that the rate of air movement and temperature
could be regulated (Aldrich et al., 1969).
The pigs in trial 1 of the farrow-to-finish
building tended to pile up and scour excessively during the first few weeks of the farrowing period. These incidences of scouring
improved after the control of the air movement and temperature regulation was established.
Creep feed consumption was less by 2.0 kg
per pig ( P < . 0 1 ) in the farrow-to-finish system (table 1). This may have been due to
feeding sows on the floor in the farrow-tofinish system and the pigs eating some sow
feed.
In the farrow-to-finish building, where no
bedding was used, some pigs during the first
few days of their life displayed evidence of
lameness and sores on their knees which was
believed to be due to the abrasive effect of
the concrete floor. This damage was most
severe during the process of establishing a
nursing pattern for a litter. This condition
was not as severe in the conventional farrowing building.
Growing Period. In the growing period the
pigs in the farrow-to-finish unit required significantly less feed per kilogram of gain (table
1). This may have been due to the stress of
being moved to a different wing of the barn.
The daily gain for the pigs in the two systems
did not differ significantly.
Finishing Period. During the finishing period the pigs kept under a farrow-to-finish
system gained significantly slower than the
pigs raised under the conventional system.
711
A SWINE PRODUCTION SYSTEM
T A B L E 1. P E R F O R M A N C E OF PIGS U N D E R
TWO MANAGEMENT-HOUSING SYSTEMS
M a n a g e m e n t system
Item
Farrowing to weaning period
(49 days)
No. of litters
Pigs/litter at 21 days of
age, no.
Pigs/litter at 49 days of
age, no.
Pig wt at 21 days of age, kg
Pig w t at 49 days of age, kg
Pig scouring days/litter, no.
Creepfeed/plg, kg
Growing period (30 days)
Pig wt at end of period, kg
Daily gain, kg
F e e d / k g of gain, kg
Finishing period ( 74 days)
Final wt/pig, kg
Daily gain, kg
F e e d / k g of gain, kg
Percen,t of Digs having less
than 86.2 kg adjusted
weight at 165 days
of age ( % )
Age to 86.2 kg adjusted
weight, days
Age at 86.2 kg or end of test
for those weighing less
than 86.2 kg (days)
Conventional
85
Farrowto-finish
78
8.3
8.1
8.1
5.2
15.5
9.7
8.6
8.0
5.3
15.0
11.6
6.6**
29.8
0.50
2.23
29.9
0.48
1.85**
87.2
0.75
3.14
81.3**
0.70**
3.06
10.5
31.40**
152.1
159.5**
151.1
154.0"*
~'~ Means differ significantly (P<.01).
The pigs were removed from the test as they
exceeded 86.2 kg or at the end of the trial,
this resulted in an average finishing period
of 74 days per pig. The end of the trial was
165 days after the first sow farrowed in that
trial. Allowing 165 days for each farrowing
group and 17 days for cleaning and resting
the building between groups would permit
two litters to be raised per pen per year.
As an indicator of whether it would be
possible to raise two litters per year per pen,
the average age of the pigs at 86.2 kg was
calculated. The average age of the pigs at
86.2 kg was calculated from actual age and
weight, at the end of the test, using a regression equation. It required the pigs raised in
the farrow-to-finish system 159 days and those
in the conventional system 152 days to reach
86.2 kilograms. Therefore, it would theoretically be possible to raise two litters per pen
per year, but it would require that the farrowing period be short.
The difference in growth rate in the two
systems might be related to the number of
pigs per pen in the farrow-to-finish building.
A correlation of rate of gain and number of
pigs per pen in the farrow-to-finish unit was
calculated. The correlation was highly significant, but relatively small ( r ~ - - . 2 5 ) .
As a means of further examining the difference in rate of gain between the two systems; the pigs' gain data for the finishing
period were divided into three segments (table
2) for the finishing period. Pig weights were
obtained every 21 days for three trials and
every 28 days for one trial during the finishing period. The last or third segment used
included the time over 42 days that each pig
was on feed during the finishing period. The
first and second segment averaged 22.7 days
and the third segment averaged 28.6 days
per pig. During first and second segment of
the finishing period the pigs in the conventional system gained faster than the pigs in
the farrow-to-finish system, but not during
the third segment. Pigs in both systems gained
slower during the third segment than during
the first two segments, but their growth rates
did not differ from each other.
From farrowing to the end of the test about
three times as much labor per pig was used
in the conventional system as in the farrowto-finish system (table 3). Most of this difference was due to difference in time spent
cleaning and bedding pens in the conventional
system.
In the conventional system 2.6 hr. per pig
T A B L E 2. R A T E OF G A I N OF P I G S U N D E R
TWO MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS FOR THREE
S E G M E N T S OF T H E F I N I S H I N G P E R I O D
Average daily gain
Segment ~
First
Second
Third
~onventional
system
(k~)
0.79
0.77
0.70
Farrow-tofinish system
(kg)
0.66**
0.72**
0.70
a The finishing period began when the pigs averaged 79 days
of age, the first segment covered an average of 22.7 davs, the
second segment 22.7 days and the third 28.6 days per pig.
~ M e a n s differ significantly (P~.01).
712
SHERRITT
TABLE 3. LABOR USED IN TWO SYSTEMS
OF SWINE PRODUCTION
Item
Conventional
system
Farrow-tofinish
system
57.4
31.6
160.5
217.9
33.2
64.8
Farrowing. nursing period and
weaning (rain. per pig)
Post-weaning to end of finishing period (rain. per Dig)
Total .time (rain. per pig)
was spent in bedding and cleaning pens while
0.3 hr. per pig was spent cleaning pens in
the farrow-to-finish system. This is a difference due to type of building (solid, bedded
floors vs. slatted floors without bedding)
rather than management system. I n the conventional system 0.14 hr. per pig was spent
moving and mixing pigs.
Daniel et al. (1967) ; K a d l e c et al. (1966) ;
Seerley et al. (1970) reported labor savings
of similar magnitude for p a r t i a l l y slatted
floors in comparison with solid floored
buildings.
I t would appear from the results of this
s t u d y t h a t a farrow-to-finish system in which
two litters per year are raised from b i r t h to
m a r k e t in the same pen is workable under
precise scheduling. However, to be a practical
system, it would require either synchronization of the females a t breeding or breeding
a large enough number of females so that
those exhibiting estrus and settling within
a p p r o x i m a t e l y a week could be selected to
fill a housing unit. T h e potential advantages
often cited for the farrow-to-finish system in
terms of rate of gain and feed efficiency were
not realized in this s t u d y and no difference
in health was noted between systems. However, problems of changes in management and
problems of scheduling of housing use are
lessened b y the system.
Summary
A farrow-to-finish system in which pigs
were raised from birth to m a r k e t in the same
pen was compared with a conventional system
in which pigs were moved twice and mixed
E T AL.
with pigs from other litters for a finishing
period. T h e pigs in the conventional system
were farrowed in one pen, moved to a second
pen in another wing of the b a r n for a growing
period and mixed with pigs from other litters
and grown out to m a r k e t weight in a third
pen. There were four trials or farrowing periods with a total of 78 litters being raised
in the farrow-to-finish system and 85 litters
in the conventional system.
T h e pigs raised in the farrow-to-finish system grew slower during the finishing perio d
and took longer to reach m a r k e t weight than
pigs grown in the conventional system.
A farrow-to-finish system requires closer
scheduling of breeding than is possible w i t h
one herd and breeding to farrow in one unit.
Literature
Cited
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Charlick, R. H., H. R. Livingston, A. McNair and
D. W. B. Sainsbury. 1968. The housing of pigs in
one pen from birth to slaughter. National Institute
Agr. Eng. Silsol, Eng. Exp. Farm Buildings Rep.
11.
Daniel, R., J. E. Kadlec, W. H. M. Morris, H. W.
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