Seek advice from to the IFIP-Institut du Porc experimental swine station – Articles
by Gabrielguzg
Sooner than we provide an explanation for how the experimental farm works, we wish to thank IFIP for letting us consult with the amenities and a unique thanks to Anne Hemónic for directing us all over the consult with and for explaining how the whole lot works.
The ability properties 200 sows and is farrow-to-finish. The oldest constructions had been revamped and expanded, together with the development in 2013 of rooms for group-housed gestating sows, loose-housed farrowing devices, and a brand new nursery and completing development in 2021. For 2024, there’s a development mission for 2 pens with a capability for 30 completing pigs housed on bedding and with get right of entry to to an out of doors patio on slats or concrete slab.
Blueprint of the IFIP experimental station in Romillé.
Housing varieties
The experimental station has various kinds of housing, a few of which mirror the most typical programs in France so far (slat flooring, liquid feeding, gravity evacuation of slurry, and so on.), whilst others are comparing new traits, as an example:
Centralized air flow with a warmth exchanger on the outlet to get better the warmth from the extracted air and use it to warmth the air getting into the constructions from the outdoor.
Air scrubber.
V-shaped scrapers within the completing pits.
Loose-range farrowing in 6.5 m² pens provided with movable flooring, a weighing house, a nest for piglets, an on-demand feeding tool, and detachable walls that permit the width of every pen to be adjusted to extend or lower as wanted.
Rooms with partial slat, general slat, or with bedding.
Rooms with small pen sizes to deal with teams of 8 to ten animals. Whilst this doesn’t constitute the truth of industrial farms, they give you the trials with larger statistical energy with the aim of every pen being a statistical unit.
Free housing in farrowing.
Completing pigs on straw bedding.
Biosecurity
On the farm front, there’s a space with ten showers the place all team of workers getting into the barns should bathe and placed on explicit, blank garments to go into the pens.
To transport from the farrowing unit to the nursery and completing unit, converting shoes is needed, which is color-coded.
Feeding machine
So that you can carry out as many trials as imaginable with various kinds of feed, the experimental station has 32 silos with a 4-ton capability and 5 silos with 16 heaps. The machine permits every part to be weighed and as soon as combined, the feed is sent during the station pneumatically. The good thing about the program with pulsed air is that it may be despatched over very lengthy distances and there’s no possibility of blending two sorts of feed as a result of they’re separated via air. There are greater than 200 other supply issues.
Laboratories
For the reason that finish of 2023, 3 microbiology laboratories, a chemistry laboratory specialised in inspecting meats and sausages (skatole/androstenone, oxidation, nitrosated compounds, and so on.), and a technological laboratory for generating meats and sausages below managed prerequisites, in addition to a cellular tomographic scanner put in on a semi-trailer, had been up and working.
Foundation of the experimental animals
The animals are bought from a multiplier close to the amenities. Whilst prior to now a part of the pigs have been bought for completing, the growth of the amenities has made it imaginable to complete all of the pigs, so there are extra animals to combine into the other trials and a better selection of information.
From a sanitary standpoint, the animals are consultant of Breton farms. The animals used are carriers of sure classical native pathogens (Mycoplasma, influenza, E. coli, and so on.), apart from PRRSV, with little medical expression, which makes it imaginable to keep away from biasing the experiments via being sufficiently consultant of box prerequisites.
What sorts of trials do they run?
Because of the nice variety of apparatus, a wide variety of trials associated with dealing with, vitamin, copy, air flow, welfare, conduct, sanitation, surroundings, and so on. can also be performed within the amenities.
Some examples can be:
Precision feeding trials the usage of programs able to distributing feed personally for every animal consistent with intercourse and reside weight. The machine comes provided with an animal weighing station.
Adaptation to local weather trade and emerging temperatures: they investigated using a much less thermogenic feed, a transformation in meal occasions via programming the system to supply foods all over the least scorching hours, and so on.
Completing on straw bedding with slatted out of doors yards: this mission, with a machine little utilized in France, however with higher societal acceptability, must make it imaginable to evaluate the imaginable benefits and drawbacks, from the standpoint of animal well being and welfare, but additionally that of the employees, in addition to the environmental have an effect on, the extra financial price, and so on.
Use of ear tags with RFID era to review particular person animal conduct and care for traceability even as much as the slaughterhouse.
Trials with castrated and full men.
Stories with tail biting.
Free housing in farrowing.
Other sorts of manure removing.
Use of various kinds of manipulable fabrics akin to jute fiber, wooden, and so on.
Use of cameras in pens.
Completing barns with an individualized feeding machine.
Monitoring tool for pigs with out tail docking.
The group of workers
The amenities have a complete of 8 staff between caretakers and administrative team of workers. There are 3 caretakers within the farrowing barns, whilst within the nursery and completing spaces, there are generally 4 other folks and incessantly there also are trainees and doctoral scholars.
The team of workers should be capable of trade routines once in a while as every experiment would require a selected form of dealing with or the number of other information.
Information assortment
Some information are nonetheless gathered on paper and want to be consolidated and analyzed, even supposing digitization of information acquisition and processing is now an integral a part of the mission. Technical effects are to be had in actual time and can also be connected without delay to slaughter information.
The knowledge, as soon as centralized, are analyzed via engineers with the aim of proposing new suggestions for pig farming.
How are they financed?
The experimental station responds to the experimental wishes of farmers, corporations within the trade (meals, genetics, pharmaceutical laboratories, and so on.) and public establishments.
It is usually financed via French and Ecu requires tasks.
