Tailor-made piglet nursery for Yorkshire farmer

Andy Brown's new ready-to-use piglet nursery cabin being deivered to his farm near Hull
Andy Brown's new ready-to-use piglet nursery cabin being deivered to his farm near Hull

A bespoke ready-to-use nursery cabin has been delivered to a Yorkshire farmer. The container-style buildings, specifically developed to help pig producers rear surplus piglets from their sows, are manufactured by Suffolk housing and equipment company, Quality Equipment, at the company’s Woolpit works.

Andy Brown of A & M Farms Ltd, near Hull, ordered the nursery, having seen the system being employed on one of Rattlerow Farms’ 600-sow commercial units where it was saving, on average, the life of half a pig a litter.

The nurseries are available in various sizes and configurations to suit individual farm requirement and Andy chose a single-room cabin divided into three separate pens each holding up to 28 pigs. Andy runs a 600-sow herd, batch farrowing around 70 sows every three weeks. The nursery was designed specifically to fit in with his system — allowing for one surplus pig per sow, with some extra capacity built in.

In addition to having its own heating, ventilation and slurry system, it is equipped with a warm-water Transition feeder which mixes gruel for the piglets on a little-and-often basis mimicking the sow’s own feeding pattern — vital for rearing very young piglets.

The layout of the nursery cabin was designed specifically to suit Andy Brown
The layout of the nursery cabin was designed specifically to suit Andy Brown's batch farrowing pattern

“With today’s highly-prolific sows many producers have difficulty in rearing all the pigs they produce. We developed this nursery specifically to solve this problem,” commented QE director, Mark Harding, who designed the unit. “The cabins come ready to commission — the producer just has to add water, power — and piglets!”

Andy said: “Feed cost aside, I only have to rear an extra 12 piglets per batch to cover the finance on the new nursery.” It cost £19,000.