In one room, lactating sows are fed using Nedap Farrowing Feeding; this allows the farm to know feed con- sumption even though they are not in group housing.


Weaned piglets in a


room where water con- sumption can be closely monitored. In the back- ground various different pipes can be discerned.


The metabolism cages allow meticulous obser- vation of what is going in and going out with any animal kept in here.


philosophy is the ongoing gathering of sow feeding data to eventually be able to use these figures for predicting which sows might abort or will deliver a higher number of stillborn piglets, by means of cognitive analytics. International as well as major Spanish health and animal nutrition companies make use of the farm’s services, from Elanco to Zoetis and from Chr. Hansen to Zinpro. Most com- pound feed diets are made specifically for these trials by feed company Nuri i Espadaler, from Vic near Barcelona, Spain.


Farm set-up The 500-sow research farm consists of two parts – an older two-barn section which was acquired in 2004 and a newer pig barn which was added only in 2015. The older section initially was a commercial farm. Piñeiro explains, “We had to adjust the older farm buildings at cer- tain places to make it suitable for research. Initially, for instance, they had placed Electronic Sow Feeding (ESF) sta- tions with the entrance close to the wall. The result was that one dominant sow was blocking the entrance and wouldn’t go. That wasn’t very handy. When we installed new ESF sta- tions, we turned that around. Things have worked a lot better ever since.”


Purpose-built research barn The newer part of the farm was added in 2015 for about


€ 320,000 and was completely purpose-built for being a research facility. Interesting in this addition is the opportu- nity to do intensive environmental research, as a rather costly infrared photoacoustic field gas monitor is connected to each of the five rooms inside this barn. The device can meas- ure ammonia, methane, nitrous oxide or CO2


.


Piñeiro: “Quite often, clients would like to know not only the effect of certain feed additives on growth performance, but also the output on the environ- ment. Is most of the feed converted into growth or is also a part influencing air quality? That is why we have several sensors in every room, they measure at any wished moment the exact composition of the


Carlos Piñeiro, CEO of


PigChamp Pro Europa and driving force behind the Centro Experimental Porcino.


PIG PROGRESS VOLUME 32, No. 6, 2016 17


PHOTOS: VINCENT TER BEEK


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