Farrowing is one of the most precarious areas on a farm. Everything leads up to and flows from this one activity. So it only makes sense that farrowing rooms should get attention too! We have gathered a list of six important factors to consider in your farrowing room. 

When you are training gilts for ESF pens, you need a certain type of personality working with those girls. But it may not be the type of personality you expect.

It seems like we never know what kind of late summer we are going to get. It could be hot and dry, it could be unseasonably cool. For most people, hot and dry summer days are a reminder to relax and lounge around the pool, but if you're a barn owner, you should be thinking about how you can use those hot summer days to clean your barns. Here are some tips to help your summer barn cleaning run a bit more smoothly.

We recently had the exciting opportunity to work with Topigs Norsvin as they opened their groundbreaking Delta Canada boar testing barn in Woodlands, Manitoba. This project marks an exciting time in boar research, where intricate data analysis and responsive genetic selection can improve stock in less time. Below we share a time-lapse of the project and an explanation of the overall impact on the pork genetics landscape. 

If you took psychology in high school or college you've probably heard about Pavlov's dogs, but swine are just as suggestible as dogs. With a little creative thinking you can avoid potential training mishaps and prevent your gilts from developing bad habits.

Arno van Brandenburg is the eminence grise of the electronic feeding industry. His name is well known throughout the hog world, and working with Nedap since 1984 has given him an insider view to the rise of many new technologies that have changed the swine world for the better.

Installing new feed equipment in a group housing barn has been credited with enhancing production, feed efficiency, and the overall health of the animals. While precision feeding technology certainly provides the opportunity to step up your production and barn operations, new equipment alone will never leave you with the high-functioning barn you desire. You should never just buy electronic sow feeding equipment and expect a group housing barn to work. Keep reading to find out why. 

Let's imagine you’re at a large workplace that has a cafeteria where all workers eat. You can even have it catered by your favorite restaurant if you want; after all, this is your analogy. 

Every day at lunch time, you head over to the cafeteria to grab lunch along with your friends. The cafeteria analogy works well as you’re given free choice on where you sit and who you hang out with.

This will probably seem like a no-brainer, but one of the biggest factors determining success on a hog farm is making sure the sows that are supposed to be pregnant are actually pregnant. In traditional gestation stalls workers are tasked with performing ultrasound on each bred sow, a job that can be dangerous both for workers and pigs. Time consumption is a big factor with this method.

Even after switching to group housing, some farms still struggle to find a good system for identifying sows in heat. Watching for visual signs of estrus is a skill that takes time to develop and require close staff monitoring. Thankfully with New Standard and Nedap Livestock Management, the task of identifying and dealing with open sows gets a whole lot easier. 

At New Standard, we strongly believe that forward exiting electronic feeders facilitate the best barn layout for sows. In addition to being supported by research, forward exiting just plain works. Forward exiting is vital to ESF success for several reasons.