Hog Farm, Chapter 3: Not Your Grand-Father’s Pig Barn!

Image from the film, The Wizard of Oz (1939)

If someone asked me three months ago to describe what I thought a pig farm (raising market pigs) looked like, I probably would have naively said a long barn with big open pens inside, dirt floors, and some outside exercise area for fresh air and sunlight. I would have expected to see a slop trough and a lot of manure. The scene from the Wizard of Oz film (1939) where Dorothy loses her balance and falls into the pen is an image that is ingrained on my mind, as well. The only place I’ve ever seen a pig in real-life is at the state and county fairs with usually one sleepy pig per huge pen.

What I saw at the Gould Farm last weekend was a very different picture and more enlightened than the one in my mind. Farming has progressed since the time of the very small farm and a few pigs – the farms that make up most of the picture books I read to my two boys, by the way. I’m learning that the very small operation farmers are few and far between, mostly serving an urban niche market (like Farmer’s Markets). The farms that are producing the meat we buy at the grocery store are still largely family-owned farms (94% of farms in Illinois are family farms), but there are a lot less farms and they have to supply more food than ever before. A small farm by today’s standards is producing a lot more food in comparison to an average size farm 40 years ago.

Upon touring the Gould farm, I learned that pigs cannot survive outdoors in the extreme ups and downs of our northern climate. They need a mild and constant climate; otherwise, they become susceptible to illness or disease.

Another problem with outdoor areas for pigs is rodents, birds, and other animals can easily bring parasites or viruses to the pigs. Preventing illness is always preferred over treating sickness.

Today, pig farming at the Gould farm, and many other farms, has been updated to be exclusively indoors because it is better for the welfare of the animals.

Aerial view of the Gould Farm (3 parallel hog barns on right)

The Gould farm has three long and narrow metal barns that are linked by enclosed passageways. They sit parallel to each other, but are physically separate from each other in order to reduce the opportunity for disease transmission from barn to barn. And each barn serves a specific purpose, housing a different group of pigs.

The first barn is called the isolation barn and it is where new-to-the-farm adult gilts (a female that has not yet been bred) are housed for two weeks in quarantine to assess their health before exposing them to the healthy animals in the other barns. The Goulds take animal health very seriously.

I am standing in one of the farrowing rooms 

with several farrowing crates on each side

The second barn houses the newborn market piglets and the mothers. The sows are brought to bear their young in a pen called a farrowing crate and that is where they stay with their piglets for three weeks until the piglets have been weaned from the mother. This barn was very clean, as were all of the pigs we saw. After each litter of piglets, the farrowing pens are pressure washed with very hot water and sanitized.

Inside the sow barn

The third barn houses about 700 sows (the breeding adult females). There are several boars that live in this barn, as well. This is where our tour with Chris Gould started. He demonstrated how they artificially inseminate a sow and how they care for her leading up to and during her pregnancy. Just prior to giving birth, she is moved to the next barn to deliver her litter. We saw the metal stalls that are commonly called gestation stalls. Not all farms use this type of containment, but it is common practice and preferred by the Goulds. They place a strong emphasis on the health of their animals and they believe this system allows them to provide the highest level of individual care for each sow. He then pointed out the feed tubes and water spouts that are part of the system. He explained the “baseball card” stat sheet attached at the front of each sow’s pen. This barn was very orderly and clean.

All of the buildings are climate controlled and we were told they maintain 70 degrees Fahrenheit. There are ventilation windows with fans connected to timers and sensors. An adult pig is very sensitive to extreme heat; a baby piglet is very sensitive to extreme cold. In the farrowing barn, the newborn piglets need a warmer temperature than their mother, about 90 degrees Fahrenheit, so in each crate there are heat lamps and heat pads that they cuddle up to if they’re feeling cool.

The floor of the barns has slats that allow the pig manure to fall down through into a manure pit of a specific depth. The Gould’s pit depth, we learned, is four feet, but it is different farm to farm. Until it is pumped out for use on the crop fields, which occurs three times per year at the Gould farm, the manure is held in the pit. I learned the ventilation fans help exhaust some of the odor and dust in the air.

It seems to me, after seeing the barn structures first-hand, that current hog housing responds to animal welfare problems of the past and it is doing a good job solving those problems. Over the decades, the Goulds have updated their facilities to make improvements based on science.