Prairie Swine Centre Begins Renovations of Floral Research Facilities

CANADA - The Prairie Swine Centre has kicked off a major revovation of its research facilities located near Floral, Saskatchewan, writes Bruce Cochrane.
calendar icon 4 November 2007
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The Prairie Swine Centre is a non-profit research and technology corporation, affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan, which conducts research in three disciplines animal behaviour, nutrition and engineering.

The centre is now in the process of replacing its 30 year old gestation and lacation facility and gilt development area located at Floral.

CEO Dr. John Patience says the renovations will allow the facility to operate in a manner that more closely resembles that of a commercial swine operation.

Dr. John Patience-Prairie Swine Centre

The primary objective is to make the Prairie Swine Centre a more efficient operation.

As you and all your listeners know the red meat industries are going through a very very difficult time right now and everybody is knuckling down and looking for ways that we can operate in a more efficient way and we think that, as a research facility, we need to be doing exactly the same thing and so the primary motivation for us undergoing this renovation is to really make us a more efficient pork producer and therefore a more efficient research facility as well.

The way the Prairie Swine Centre was originally built in 1980 was there were three different sow barns.

That required that we were breeding in different barns, we were farrowing in different barns, we were weaning in different barns so it's really quite innefficent and so in the new facility it will be all consilidated so, just like any commercial farm, we'll have everything under one roof and it'll be a much more efficient facility to operate.


Dr. Patience says, because feeding will be automated in all areas, any time that was previously spent on hand feeding will now be done automatically including the farrowing area so staff will be able to devote more of their time to the detailed care of animals and research functions.

The new facility is sheduled to be ready for occupancy by April.

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