360° Canadian Pig Farm Tour

This is a 360 degree video. You can look around by swiping left or right across your mobile device or by using the click and drag function on your desktop or laptop. Enjoy! Welcome to a Canadian pig farm. Throughout this video you'll learn all there is to know about pigs. What they eat, how they're cared for, where they live and more. Ready? Come on in. Most pigs on commercial farms in Canada are raised inside barns. Pigs, and especially young pigs, are susceptible to illness and disease. Clothes or shoes can easily become contaminated with a bacteria or virus and transport a disease into or out of the barn. To keep the pigs healthy and safe, pig farms across Canada have strict biosecurity measures in place. This particular farm has a That means everyone, including the farmers who live and work here, employees and especially visitors to the farm, must take a shower every time they enter the barn and every time they leave. Before showering in, the farmer must remove and store all their outside clothes in the shower area of the barn. Once showered, the farmer gets dressed in clean clothes or coveralls and shoes that are only worn inside the barn. The process is repeated to exit the barn by leaving barn clothes in the laundry area to be cleaned, showering and getting dressed in outside clothes. The barn is equipped with laundry facilities as well as an office that you can see here, a kitchen and a washroom. These features help to reduce the need to leave once the farmers and farm employees have showered into the barn for the day. So, what do pig farmers do? Let's find out. This farm is what's called a pharaoh to finish operation. That means farmers raise the pigs throughout their entire growth cycle, from piglets to animals ready for market, as well as sows for breeding and having piglets. Right now, we're moving down the aisle between the pens where the pregnant sows are kept. Sows are female adult pigs that have given birth to at least one litter of piglets. Notice the floors have slats or narrow openings to allow manure to fall into a manure management system below, which keeps the pens clean. There's also a special ventilation system that constantly filters fresh air into the entire barn. Pigs are social animals and prefer to be in a group. As you can see, there's lots of room in the sow pens for animals to walk around and find the perfect place to rest. Two things sows love to do are eat and sleep. You can see many sows lying down together having a nap, which is how they spend a lot of their time. This barn is equipped with automatic feeders. When they feel hungry, the sows enter into the feeder and are fed a nutritionally balanced ration of feed made up of grains such as corn and soybeans with added vitamins and minerals. Water is added to the mix after it's dispensed, creating a porridge-like mixture. The feeder scans the ear tag of each sow as she enters and provides her with the amount of feed that she needs. Sows have different eating patterns. Some will eat their entire feed ration at once and others will eat small amounts throughout the day. Automatic feeders ensure that they all get the right amount no matter what their eating patterns. Spaced throughout the sow pens are water drinkers. Anytime a sow is thirsty, she can get herself a drink of fresh water. Pigs are very curious and social animals. In this barn, the farmers use enrichments throughout the pens so the sows have something to do. Here you can see a sow using an enrichment, playing with a chain. Other types of enrichments include adding straw or hay racks or trays of peat moss for rooting. There are even special rubberized toys made for pig enrichment. All of the pigs you see in these pens are females that are either waiting to be bred or pregnant with piglets. Farmers keep a close eye on the cycle of each sow using charts and tracking mechanisms on their computers in order to have the sows bred successfully. Each sow pen has a special area for a male pig or boar. The boar is used to help the farmer detect if a sow is at the right point in her cycle and ready to be bred. When the sow is in heat, she's ready to be bred using artificial insemination. Approximately 30 days after breeding, the farmer can confirm that a sow is pregnant. Here you can see a farmer conducting an ultrasound on a sow. The small ultrasound machine allows the farmer to see inside the sow's abdomen and confirm if she's pregnant without causing any pain or discomfort to the sow. If you're wondering what happens when a sow is ready to have her piglets, it's time to visit the maternity ward of this barn. We are now in the maternity ward or farrowing area of the barn. In fact, we're right inside a farrowing crate with a new mother and her piglets. Sows who have had or are about to have piglets are kept in a farrowing crate. The main function of these crates is safety, both for the sow and the piglets once they arrive. Before a sow gives birth to her piglets, she must be very closely monitored and cared for. Keeping her in a farrowing crate allows the farmer to give her the best one-on-one care possible to ensure she has a safe and healthy delivery of piglets. The sow has room to eat and drink at any time while in her farrowing crate. All she needs to do is stand up. Once a sow has given birth, the farrowing crate prevents the sow from accidentally harming her piglets. A fully grown sow can weigh 550 pounds, so when she wants to lay down, she flops. Piglets that have not gotten out of the way can be hurt. The crate is designed to help the sow lay down slowly, giving the piglets time to move out of the way. As you can see, this sow is lying down to feed her many piglets. You can also see a piece of burlap near the sow's snout or mouth. Each sow is provided with a strip of burlap for enrichment, which helps her to express her natural behavior of nesting before and after she has her litter. Piglets like to be warm, which is why you can see a heat lamp in the corner of this farrowing crate. There is also a special heating pad in the floor for the piglets to sleep on. For the first three weeks of life, piglets drink milk from their sow. Most sows have only 14 teats, so mealtimes are always competitive. Another advantage of farrowing crates is that they allow the farmer to monitor piglet health, making sure each individual piglet, in what can otherwise be a very large litter, is getting enough milk from the sow. At four weeks of age, the farmer introduces a special feed called creep feed to slowly transition the piglets to solid food. Once they're fully transitioned, the piglets move from the farrowing area into another area of the barn called the nursery, and the sow is moved back into the pens. What happens to the piglets once they're weaned from the sow? Let's find out! Once young pigs are weaned from the sow, they're separated into groups based on their age. They'll stay together in this age group and move to different areas of the barn as they continue to grow and their nutritional needs change. Here you can see some young piglets eating their feed as well as using enrichments. Moving pigs from one pen to another within the barn happens as the pigs grow. Most pig barns in Canada are designed so that farmers can easily move their pig groups from one room to another simply by walking them down the hallway. Moving pigs this way is not only an efficient use of time for the farmer, but also helps keep the pigs calm as they move to their new pen. Here you can see a farmer moving a group of young pigs by walking behind them with a plastic board. Along with some strategically placed gates and their voice for encouragement, the farmer is able to easily move this group from their pen in the farrowing area to another pen more suited for pigs their size and age. Here we are in a pen with some older pigs. You can see there are drinkers spaced throughout the pen on the wall and that the floor is slatted for manure management just like in the sow pens. Right now the pigs are eating their special liquid feed. Each stage of growth gets a customized mixture of grains, corn, vitamins, minerals, and water mixed in a central feed room and distributed to the rooms that need it. Here we are in the feed room. The liquid feed is moved from the feed room throughout the barn by a pipe system. Each group of pigs has a unique recipe of feed the farmer must mix separately every day. This is a big job and requires a lot of time and attention to make sure each group receives the right feed mixture. To make this process a little easier, the farmer uses computers and automatic feed systems to ensure each recipe is made to its exact specifications every time. These pigs will be raised on this farm until they reach market weight, which in Canada is between 250 and 275 pounds. It will take the pigs about six months to reach this weight, at which time they'll be shipped to market to be sold. Thank you for visiting this Canadian pig farm. We hope you had fun and learned something too. If you'd like to learn even more about pigs raised in Canada, please click on the other videos in this section.