New Web Site to Help Convert Sow Barns to Group Housing

CANADA - A new web site planned for launch this spring will provide pork producers information they can use when planning to convert from conventional stall housing of gestating sows to group housing, writes Bruce Cochrane.
calendar icon 27 January 2015
clock icon 3 minute read

As part of a National Sow Housing Conversion Project, scientists working on behalf of Swine Innovation Porc are examining the economics of various options for converting from conventional stall housing of gestating sows to group housing.

Dr Jennifer Brown, a research scientist in ethology with the Saskatoon based Prairie Swine Centre, says information on various group housing systems gathered world wide and economic analysis of conversions completed in Canada will be made available through a web site that is now being developed.

Dr Jennifer Brown-Prairie Swine Centre:

We figured that that would be the most effective way of getting this information out.

Certainly we have newsletters and we have regular meetings with producers here at the Banff Pork Seminar and provincial pork seminars where we give presentations but I figured a web site is definitely going to be accessible to all people and we can have a variety of information and videos.

We are working with a web site development group in Winnipeg.

We've got the layout designed and we are just putting the content in there.

When we're documenting barn conversions or a group housing system that's already in use we'll take photographs, we can interview the managers and talk about how the transition went for them.
All that information is going to be accessible through the web site.

It's going to be groupsowhousing.com so a very easy source to find so if anyone just keys that in to a search you'll be able to find it.

We're hoping to launch that web site in March and then we'll continue updating it throughout the project.

Dr Brown says the new web site will be geared toward producers and will contain examples of barn conversions, including what the previous management system looked like, what the conversation entailed, and documentation of the renovation costs.

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