SARE 1999 Highlights

Deep Bedding, Cooperative Marketing Create New Profit Potential for Hog Producers

Grouping sows and piglets between two and five weeks of age in a deep-bedding system lessens sow lactation problems and decreases pig mortality. Photo by M. Honeyman, Iowa State University

Hog producers seeking to cut production costs or increase value through marketing can benefit from SARE research in Iowa and Minnesota. In Iowa, researchers investigating the applicability of a Swedish deep-bedding system for hogs were buoyed by the interest of more than 3,500 visitors. Rather than raising hogs in single crates on mesh flooring above a manure pit, heating, housing and antibiotic costs were reduced by using intensive management, simply constructed houses and cornstalk bedding. The bedding absorbs manure, allows for rooting and supplies a high-fiber diet supplement. Grouping sows and piglets throughout gestation, birth and lactation in a hooped structure and a more sheltered building caused less animal stress, resulting in fewer infections and allowing sows to conceive more easily and piglets to grow faster. In Minnesota, a new hog producer cooperative funded by SARE is building a local processing plant, the first step to direct-marketing their "drug-free" meat. About 80 members who raise their pigs without antibiotics or hormones expect to improve profits when the co-op sells to a chain of national health food stores, Twin Cities-area supermarkets and over the Internet. [For more information about this North Central Region project, go to www.sare.org/projects/ and search for LNC95-080 and FNC96-156.]

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