Two employees of HyLife sow farms in La Broquerie have won the F. X. Aherne Prize for Innovative Pork Production at the 2023 Banff Pork Seminar.
In most sow farms, the weaning process typically involves picking up piglets, vaccinating them and separating them by sex.
But repeatedly collecting and picking up piglets places strain on a worker’s body, especially their back and arms, because most of these piglets are 12 pounds or heavier. Staff often consider this process one of the most strenuous tasks at a sow farm, with some farms weaning 3,000 piglets per week.
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To improve this method and reduce worker strain and stress for piglets, Robert Lafrenière and Barak Doell developed the HyLife weaning ramp, which eliminates the need to pick piglets off the floor. Initially, piglets exit the farrowing crate by opening the sow gate while staff use noise shakers to move them into the alleyway and toward the ramp.
Piglets are moved in groups of 20 to 25 and once up the ramp, a gate using a pulley system is lowered behind them. Staff can begin picking the piglets from waist height to be vaccinated and then place them on a slide depending on their sex. Gradual sloping slides off each side of the station bring the piglet slowly and gently to ground level.
HyLife has implemented weaning ramps at multiple sow farms, all of which have been received positively by staff. Of equal importance, the weaning ramp reduces stress on the joints of the piglets by minimizing the amount and degree they are handled by workers.
The ramp received an endorsement from animal behaviour expert Temple Grandin, who said it should become an industry standard.
“I was amazed how well those little pigs used the ramp; that’s the kind of stuff that makes handling easier,” Grandin said in a HyLife release.
The American academic, who has designed many livestock handling systems, saw the ramp during a tour of HyLife farms.
“It gets rid of the back-breaking work,” she said. “It’s also going to improve good treatment of the pigs as the job is so much easier. And you make a job easier, and people are going to like it a whole lot better. That is something the whole industry should have.”
