PHOTO: ASSERVA
PHOTO: VINCENT TER BEEK
PHOTO: VINCENT TER BEEK
FARM VISIT ▶▶▶
An “ESF” station for grow-finishers
Individual precision feeding for sows has been affordable and doable for decades. For finisher pigs, something similar has always been possible too, theoretically; yet the costs and investments somehow never seemed to be outweighed by the benefits. Until 2021, that is. Finisher feeding is about to make the step too – as can be seen in Brittany, France.
BY VINCENT TER BEEK, EDITOR, PIG PROGRESS P PROFILE
Name: Frédéric Baudet, age 41. Location: La Malhoure, Brittany, France. Farm: Earl de Grand Clos is a two-site farrow-to-finish farm, con- sisting of one site with 430 sows and a second site with finishers about 2 km away. That facility, which is about five years old, has a capacity of 2,000 finishers. At the grow-finisher site, the ani- mals receive three different types of feed. The pigs are sent to slaughter at Cooperl in nearby Lamballe at a weight of roughly 125–130 kg.
ig 1070016581 understands well how the feed station works. All he needs to do is follow the yellow light. He pushes through the open door and walks across the floor, towards the light. That’s where the trough is.
Mashed particles start falling down, and so does fresh water, so in front of him a wet substance appears. He can hear the others around him and can even see them through the holes on the side, but they leave him alone while he starts munching.
The above paragraph probably raises a lot of questions. What is this all about? How do we know pig 1070016581 is male? What is the light all about? How come the pig seems to have a number? And where are we? To start with the last question – this takes place at the finishing pig site of Earl du Grand Clos near the village La Malhoure, close to Lamballe, Brittany, France. Pig producer Frédéric Baudet, age 41, producing for France’s largest coop- erative Cooperl, owns a farrow-to-finish farm there. The farm consists of a sow facility with 430 sows and a grow-finisher site 2 km down the road for 2,000 finishers altogether. Interested in trying new things and hoping to always improve productivity, Baudet is one of the farmers who was keen to try the Selfifeeder GFI, one of the latest additions to the port- folio of French livestock equipment company Asserva. “GFI” is short for grow-finishers. There is also a Selfifeeder GES, with the GES referring to “gestation”. That design will ring a bell for most; it is Asserva’s version of an Electronic Sow Feeding (ESF) station. So basically what can be found in Baudet’s finishing site is an “ESF” station, but for grow-finishing pigs, with built-in weigh- ing mechanism. And with that, a new chapter opens up in the development of swine production. No longer are finisher pigs anonymous members of a batch; they have an identity and can be treated according to specific requirements. And that comes with ear tags.
Technology to individualise pig feeding Truth be told, the technology has been there for quite some time. ESF technology has shown that it is perfectly possible to feed swine according to their individual needs – the question was why do it for grow-finisher pigs? After all, sows generally stay on-farm long enough to cover the investment and effort to provide ear tags. But grow-finishers generally disappear from a farm within a few months. There are three reasons it is timely that the development has now begun, explains Dr Audrey Gloux, R&D project manager at Asserva. She has been closely monitoring the performance results of the new type finisher feeding stations and has fre- quently visited the Baudet facility as well. The first reason relates to reducing the feed cost during the grow-finisher period. Feeding for a specific nutritional need also translates into more targeted feed costs. As finishing feed is normally responsible for between 50% and 70% of the
24 ▶ PIG PROGRESS | Volume 37, No. 10, 2021
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