The National Sow Housing Conversion Project (NSHCP) was conceived as a descriptive project to facilitate the successful conversion of Canada’s sow barns to group housing. The project involved collaboration from industry participants and academic researchers working together on a comprehensive strategy involving demonstration farms, technology transfer materials and events to support Canadian pork producers making the transition.
Research indicates that when properly implemented and managed, group housing systems provide similar levels of production to stalls. Actual transition costs range from 250 to 750 CAD per sow place, depending on the type of design, use of existing infrastructure and producer input for labour. The majority of early adopters of group housing have implemented non-competitive feeding systems, such as electronic sow feeding, which have long term benefits in terms of ease of management and individual control of feed intake over competitive feeding systems such as floor feeding.
