WASHINGTON, D.C. — Across the nation and in Canada, swine farmers are beginning to turn their hog barns into mechanized facilities that are highly productive, more efficiently ventilated and healthier environments.

 

Dave Heisler’s new hog farm in Madison County, Ohio, for example, has thousands of color-changing LED lights and can pump 7,000 gallons of water a minute into a pit below the barn and dispose of excretions from 5,000 pigs.

More importantly, his barn has a sophisticated computer ventilation system that provides a healthier environment for his pigs.

Noel Williams, chief operating officer for Iowa Select Farms in Derby, Iowa, boasts about his new $18 million sow farm that houses 6,250 sows. It’s the first sow farm built by the company in 12 years, with three more to be built by 2018.

The key design feature of the new barns is the positive pressure filtration, meaning all external air is filtered before entering the barns to help prevent the spread of deadly viruses such as those causing porcine reproductive & respiratory syndrome and porcine epidemic diarrhea.

Paul Willemse, a pork producer from Middlesex County in Ontario, boasts of his ventilation system that maintains the high health of animals and helps optimize production. His facility takes fresh air entering the barn and pushes it through a heat-exchange system, taking advantage of air warmed by the body heat of animals as it exits the facility.

All told, it provides a healthier environment for both pigs and people. There’s a common thread here. These producers, and many more, are concerned about the health of their stock and those who work around them. It all centers on ventilation.

“You filter all the air that comes in and push all the air out,” Williams said. “We  are doing everything we can to mitigate as much disease risk as possible.”

“Stale pit air is kept separate from the fresh incoming air,” Willemse added. “Fresh air is drawn into the barn from above and is drawn to the pigs’ breathing space at the same time that dust, bacteria, gases and viruses are pulled into the pit area.”

Two hog barns with similar state-ofthe-art ventilation technology are being constructed on a Wabash County farm in Indiana. The buildings feature a ventilation system designed by AirWorks, a division of Whiteshire Hamroc of Indiana.

The system’s air ducts distribute fresh air over and down onto the hogs. The buildings have slat floors, which allow the air, dust and pathogens to escape to the manure pit below.

“We’ve been looking at barn ventilation technology for quite some time,” said Lisa Becton, director of Swine Health Information and Research at the National Pork Board. “Things like mycoplasma pneumonia and influenza can be airborne, so producers and veterinarians have been looking for solutions to help farmers. And filtration is one of those technologies.”

According to Becton, the evolution of filtration technology began when producers of top studs and parent females wanted a way to protect their highly-prized investments.

“This technology is now expanding into commercial production because there’s been a lot of successes with filtration and keeping diseases out, especially in high-density areas,” she said.

With any new concept or venture come the costs associated with it. “It’s a significant investment into a system for any farm,” she said. “With new barns, it’s easy to design a ventilation system to meet your needs.

“With an existing building there’s a lot to take into account, especially when there are cracks or holes with outside air entering the structure. A structural engineer would have to be involved in the reconstruction of the facility.”

Morgan Hayes, professor and extension specialist at the University of Kentucky, has witnessed the various trends in ventilation, especially in the swine industry.

“I’m seeing an increasing number of swine farmers using a positive-pressure design in their barns,” Hayes said. “They build barns with filtration systems that push air into the barn rather than pull air out.

“It requires a little different construction because positive pressure means we need to focus on construction methods to keep moisture out of the walls. Ventilation methods vary, and there is so much to think about.”