Swine Teaching and Research Unit
The Swine Teaching and Research facility at New Bolton Center was opened in January 2001. It was designed for applied swine research and the teaching of swine production medicine. It also provides a crucial link between the School of Veterinary Medicine and the Pennsylvania swine industry by being a model of what a modern, humane swine facility can be. The building features state-of-the-art technologies for animal comfort, animal feeding, and nutrient management. The entire facility was designed to maximize animal welfare with technologies imported from Europe and since its opening has been at the cutting edge of sow comfort. Today the US swine industry finds itself confronted with rapidly changing public opinion and policy on how gestating sows should be housed. Penn Vet is uniquely positioned to provide the industry with relevant scientific data collected from this living laboratory.
In the barn, pregnant sows live together in a pen of 50-55 animals, each with a microchip in its ear. This gives the animals an opportunity to exhibit their natural behaviors. The computerized feeding system identifies a sow as it enters the electronic sow feeder, where it gets a quarter pound of feed at a time until it eats its allotment of about 6 pounds a day. The sows, which weigh 400-600 pounds, spend much of their time resting in bays along a wall. The same animals lie in the same area every day and raise a ruckus if a sow that does not belong to the clique tries to squeeze in. The farrowing room facilities were also designed with animal welfare in mind. A lactating sow will spend one week in a modified farrowing crate which will protect her newborn babies from inadvertently being crushed. After one week, the farrowing crate is opened allowing the mother to have unfettered access to her offspring inside a 50 square foot pen.
The herd is an “antibiotic free herd” meaning that no antimicrobial growth promotants are fed to any of the pigs. Five sows farrow each week and approximately 2,000 piglets are born each year. The piglets are sold as 50 pound feeder pigs to an independent producer and enter into a specialized “antibiotic free/welfare friendly” niche market. In addition, approximately 100 piglets are sold to young participants of the Chester County 4H Pig Club for exhibition in the Chester County 4H Fair and the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
The 10,000 square foot facility includes breeding, gestation, and replacement gilt space for up to 110 sows. Animal housing areas include four 10-crate farrowing rooms that can also serve as dual purpose nursery pens, two grow-to-finish rooms with four pens per room, a boar housing area that features a computerized estrus detection station, and a semen collection and processing laboratory. There is also a specialized feed preparation and mixing area that ensures fresh feed is offered to every animal at each feeding. The most unique feature is a 1,000 square foot classroom located in the center of the facility.
We have long been at the forefront of alternative swine husbandry and now we are at the forefront of alternative energies. In June 2007, solar panels were installed and activated to generate solar energy for the facility. This project was funded by grants from the Sustainable Development Fund, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, and the Pennsylvania Pork Producer’s Council. We hope that this prototype will be adopted by the entire swine industry in the future.