Turnaround Stall Worth a Second Look
The '90s design offers a compromise between stalls and pens for gestating sows. If you are among the legions of pork producers struggling to decide if...
Gestation Pens Fare Favorably to Stalls
When performance data is tabulated for sows housed in stalls vs. sows housed in pens at Dykhuis Farms, Inc. there is little difference in the overall...
Tweaking Grow-Finish Ventilation
At first glance, everything in the relatively new 2,000-head, grow-finish barn seemed to be in order. But as Mike Brumm, an independent consultant from...
Beware of Energy Thieves
Iowa State University agricultural engineer Jay Harmon says pork facilities often have less obvious energy leaks that they can correct without a large...
Energy Savers Earn Rebates
Energy-saving equipment can trim electricity bills up to nearly 50%. Lowering monthly electricity bills is probably motivation enough for most pork producers...
Rural Energy for America (REAP) Funds Help Defer Update Costs
In addition to power company rebates, agricultural producers and rural small business owners are eligible for federal grants that reimburse up to 25%...
Trickle Feeding Fits Sow Housing Remodel
The gestation housing option offers some new challenges and presents some hard lessons. Ten years ago, Sean Dolan and his father, Jim, hooked up with...
The Costs of Switching from Sow Stalls to Group Housing
Study estimates the cost of transitioning the U.S. breeding herd from widely used gestation stalls to group housing. Voters and government are increasingly...
Fix These Costly Ventilation Mistakes
Ventilation system management is the key to trimming your energy bill. In the pork industry, there are few available for comparison of energy expenses...
Energy Audits Find a Wide Range of Energy Usage
Energy use in Canadian barns surveyed differed by as much as four times. Energy audits conducted in 28 different swine facilities in Saskatchewan, Canada...
