[UPDATED; Feb. 10, 2022] It started with a request from the staff at one of the many hog barns associated with HyLife Foods.
Weaning piglets was hard on the back: bend down, pick up a 12-pound piglet, vaccinate it, bend to put it down again, this time sorted by sex. Rinse and repeat hundreds of times, sometimes for hours.
Surely a company with the resources of the Manitoba-based pork giant could help develop a better way? As it turns out, it could.
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Why it matters: HyLife Foods expects fewer aching backs after barns are set up with new piglet weaning ramps.
The request made its way to HyLife’s continuous improvement team, a segment of the company devoted to supporting on-the-ground solutions based on farmer feedback. Seeing its value, the engineers and design team got to work.
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Over the next months, a number of prototype weaning ramps were tested. The result has since been installed in seven barns, and every remaining facility in HyLife’s network is now asking for one of their own, according to Lyle Loewen, senior vice-president of the company’s farm division.
“It’s actually really caught on. People are appreciating the way it makes their work life better,” he said.
The ramp raises piglets to a comfortable height, allowing staff to work without bending over.
“The ramp can be adjusted to the optimal height for our employees,” Loewen said. “In other words, if it’s a group of shorter people working on it, it can be a lower ramp.”
Piglets are herded in groups of 20 to 25 into an inclining chute and into the initial segment of the ramp. Once all animals are at workable height, a pulley-operated gate closes behind them. A similar gate on the other end of the segment is then opened, animals are moved into the final area of the apparatus and the first section is again closed. Animals are then vaccinated and slid down a ‘male’ or ‘female’ slide.
That middle segment is important for workflow, Loewen noted. The design of the ramp allows employees to move the next group into position while the first group is being vaccinated and sorted.
“What happened in one of the original prototypes was they just had one holding area, so the piglets came in and, once they were vaccinated and slid out according to their sex, then [employees] had to wait for another group to come in,” he said. “Now there’s no waiting time.”
Accolades
The invention has won its share of second looks from the industry.
In mid-January, two sow farm employees, Robert Lafrenière and Barak Doell, took home the F.X. Aherne Prize for Innovative Pork Production from the 2023 Banff Pork Seminar because of the ramp.
The company also got an unsolicited nod from animal behaviour scientist and animal handling system designer Temple Grandin. She was touring a HyLife facility near Steinbach when the weaning ramp caught her eye, Loewen said.
The professor from Colorado State University went on the record, saying the design should be a sector standard.
“This innovative system should be in every sow farm for vaccinating weaned piglets…I can’t say enough good things about it. It should go industry-wide,” Grandin said.
“I was amazed how well those little pigs used the ramp; that’s the kind of stuff that makes handling easier.”
Piglets do have to endure a slide at the end of the process, which Loewen admitted he had initial questions about. But the system has been praised for lowering animal stress as well as employee health.
Animals are minimally handled, which reduces joint stress, the company has said. Loewen also noted the slide gradient is gentle and a comfort pad is placed in the landing zone.
“It’s not like a slide in a park where a kid really comes racing down,” he said.
The invention may speed up vaccination, since the process involves less walking and fewer pauses for back stretches.
*Update: A location reference to the HyLife facility that Temple Grandin visited was changed.
