FARM VISIT ▶▶▶
Curly tails, great health and 1kg daily growth
In Finland, tail docking was banned 17 years ago. The Finnish pig industry has had to developed methods to minimise tail biting. Pig producers Rami and Susanna Yrjälä learned that excellent feeding conditions help prevent tail biting. Their approach delivers excellent technical results.
I Profile
Name: Susanna and Rami Yrjälä, aged 42 and 43. Function: Owners of Yrjälä farm, near Mynämäki, Finland. Farm: Yrjälä farm is a wean-to-finish facility with a capacity of 1,800 finishers and 300 weaner pigs. The farm achieves 1 kg/ growth per day and has a 2% mortality rate. The farm sends its pigs to HKScan; the finishers have a lean meat per- centage of 59%.
BY KEES VAN DOOREN, REPORTER, BOERDERIJ
n Finland, environmental restrictions do not have to be in the way of livestock production. After all, the latest finish- er pig house of the Yrjälä family is located in the middle of the forest. In addition, the family are the only pig pro-
ducers in the area. Exactly one year ago, the new pig house with a capacity of 1,300 finisher pigs was taken into use by Rami and Susanna Yrjälä. In fact, that meant the farm size ca- pacity doubled as the couple already had a pig house with a capacity of 600 finisher pigs and a weaner facility with an ad- ditional 300 places. To fill these two pig houses, the couple
purchases weaned pigs at around 7kg. The new pig house is built robustly with plenty of space. Up to the gutters, the walls are made of concrete and insulated panels were used to form the roofs. In the front of the pig house, there is a space for a feeding kitchen, heat exchanger, office and hygiene entrance. The youngest piglets in the new pig house entered about one month ago. The temperature is 18.5ºC, with the floor being heated. The farm uses manure cooling in combination with a heat exchanger. That essentially means that the manure’s warmth is being used to warm the floor as well as raise the drinking water’s temperature to 17ºC. After all, the well water is cold as ice. On a daily basis, about 12m3
is heated. An addi-
tional advantage of cooling the manure is that the smell is relatively fresh in the different parts of the farm, as cooling reduces the formation of ammonia. What’s more, the emissions are further reduced because of the small emitting surface, as the majority of the pen floor is closed, not slatted. In total, the pens are 5.45m long and 2.45m wide. The slatted floor is 1.76m long, with a 44cm drain made of narrow holes through which urine can flow away.
Tail biting and feeding Since 2003, Finland has banned the practice of tail cutting. As a result, the Finnish have needed to learn how to prevent tail biting. Experience shows that suboptimal feeding conditions form the biggest risk for tail biting. The Yrjälä family therefore pays plenty of attention to correct feeding and nutrition. The farm decided to provide liquid feed to the pigs, which is served four times per day. The troughs are not allowed to be empty for long. This keeps the pigs’ gastro-intestinal tract healthy while ensuring that the pigs do not start to get hungry. Also the feeding method – in stainless steel troughs almost 5m long – helps create optimal feeding conditions. With long troughs, all thepiglets can eat simultaneously and ingest sufficient feed at the same time. Susanna Yrjälä explains, “We’ve found a feeding curve in which the feed intake is optimal. A high feed intake is an im- portant way to prevent tail biting. From experience we know that when things are stable with finisher pigs, the risk of tail biting is minimal.” The pigs are fed a complete feed until about one month after entering the finisher facility. For that, the Yrjälä family provides
20 ▶PIG PROGRESS | Volume 35, No. 10, 2019
PHOTOS: HENK RISWICK
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