International Dealer Visits US
US - A tour of newly converted gestation stalls was one of the features for a visit to the US by Schick Enterprises dealer Marcus Jones, Director of sales for Stockyard Industries and his customer Neil Ferguson from Australia.The visit included a large pen gestation system (AGS Automated Gestation System) on a 600 sow farrow to wean facility operated by Sean Dolan and family in the north east of De Moines, Iowa.
Mr Dolan had made the decision to convert from gestation stalls over a year ago, because his steel stalls were showing wear.
Schick Enterprises designed the new system which has two dynamic pens of sows, one pen holds 268 sows and the other holds 203 sows.
Mr Dolan has been using the system for about one year and said he was happy with how the system has been performing.
Mr Jones and Mr Ferguson said they were intrigued with the system adding that no matter if you have stalls or small pens, management is always important.
Mr Dolan has mastered the computer software and has come up with innovative ideas to make record keeping even easier, such as hand running the tags through the Interrogator instead of tagging the sows and waiting for them to pass through the system to be entered.
He has also removed the watering cups in the loafing area and added waterer troughs, because, he says, the sow waste less water and there is much less wear and tear on the fencing.
Schick Enterprises has changed the trickle feed station design since Mr Dolan's project and has added more cross over so sows have a better chance to filter around the feeding stations.
Schick has also changed all the trickle feed motors to a fixed speed, eliminating the problems that growers were having with the variable speed drives.
Schick's dealers Lyle and Jeff from Lange Ag Systems in Minnesota were also on the farm visit.