New hoop barn helps achieve consistent sow body condition and fits with organic production standards.

Three years ago, Organic Prairie pork producer Tom Frantzen and his son, James, planned and built a breeding-gestation barn that addresses the biggest challenge with loose housing in gestation — consistent sow condition.

Frantzen is a steadfast believer in organic pork production and the standards laid out by Organic Prairie Family of Farms based in La Farge, WI. That is not to say, however, that the Alta Vista, IA, pork producer is unwilling to capitalize on modern production methods and proven technologies.

Early in 2004, he began taking a hard look at ways to improve the lagging reproductive performance of his sow herd. “My intention was to get higher production from the number of sows I can manage fairly intensively,” he explains. “My goal was to eliminate the redundant work and concentrate my management efforts on producing more pigs per litter.”

Two issues quickly rose to the top of his priority list — gaining better control of feeding sows and curbing postweaning health issues that were taking a toll.

“We had poor reproductive rates, and our feed conversion and postweaning death losses were too high,” he explains. “Both will kill your profits.”

The herd health issues were ad-dressed first by closing the herd to outside breeding stock. The move paid off. “Postweaning death loss for the year is running the lowest it's ever been,” he says. With more pigs raised, he was able to reduce the size of the sow herd. That, in turn, cut overall feed costs and improved gain per pound of feed, which is a very big deal when organic corn is selling for $9/bu.

Next, Frantzen turned his attention to getting a better handle on reproductive performance in the sow herd. More consistent sow body condition was a top priority. With the herd closed, he was ready to tackle artificial insemination (AI), but the prospects of heat detection and inseminating sows in open lots and Cargill-type facilities were not very appealing.

He called in Tracy Harper, Harper Consulting, Mindoro, WI, who provides swine reproductive consulting services to Organic Prairie producers. Harper studied reproductive physiology at North Carolina State University, while gaining a Master's degree in animal science, and held positions with Carroll's Foods in North Carolina and, more recently, Babcock Genetics. In addition to consulting, she is an agribusiness and science technology instructor at Western Technical College in La Crosse, WI.

“With Organic Prairie producers, one of the first things I have worked on is improving sow condition because it's all over the place,” Harper explains. “It's very difficult to manage when sows are fed in groups or when they are mixed in groups of different-parity sows. I could see the hoop buildings would go a long way toward resolving those concerns.”

Frantzen, his son, James, and Harper began poring over various hoop barn designs that would fit with the Organic Prairie philosophy. He toured an Iowa State University farm with hoop barn gestation.

Homemade Gate Secures Sows

Frantzen settled on a 30×60-ft. hoop barn, and on Harper's recommendation, began searching for free-access feeding stalls. “I suggested it would be desirable to be able to close the rear gate during feeding to avoid competition between sows,” she says.

The father-son duo found some used 2×7-ft. gestation stalls and set to work on designing a gate mechanism that would allow them to open and close the rear gate from the front aisle while feeding. A one-way swinging gate seemed too cumbersome, so they decided to split the rear gate in the middle and mount it with drop rods. Next, they began tinkering with a mechanism that would work much like the scissor-action of a bus door.

After considerable trial and error, they attached two flat iron pieces to the top, inside portion of the split gates. The flat iron pieces are joined and bolted to a single, longer flat iron piece that is threaded through a length of square tubing welded to the top of each stall (see photos, page 9). This latter flat iron piece is bent to form a handle.

A hole is drilled in the flat iron piece, just ahead of the square tubing when the rear gate is closed. A bolt-washer-nut combination, short enough to fit through the square tubing, is secured in the hole. When the flat iron handle is lifted slightly and pushed, the rear gate opens. Pull on the handle until the bolt drops across the front lip of the square tubing, and the rear gate is closed and secured.

Frantzen bought the used stalls for just $15 each; $20 covered the cost of materials for each rear gate mechanism. A local machine shop cut and bent the pieces for assembly.

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