Sows at Inge Stevens and husband Eddy van Raemdonck’s closed farm have been housed in groups from as far back as 1987. They feed the gestation sows there individually using Nedap Electronic Sow Feeding. A source of irritation used to be the inability to feed the sows exactly as required in the farrowing pen. In 2017, they made a change to this.

They weren’t even really looking for it. But when Inge and Eddy came across an automatic feeding system for farrowing pens at a trade fair, they were soon convinced: Nedap Farrowing Feeding would offer them many benefits in terms of profits and convenience. The pig farm, which is primarily run by Inge and full-time employee Mieke, uses a three-week system and static groups. Inge explains this decision: “There are seven fixed groups of about forty-five sows each. We have two farrowing units and the remaining five groups are kept in the breeding and gestation stall. The young gilts become acquainted with the feeding station in a separate ‘transition group’. We considered working with a dynamic group, but the fixed groups offered more structure and a better overview.”

Sows get four feed types

“Our four feed types are in the form of meal and are produced on our own land,” Inge explains with modest pride. “Using meal in an automatic feeding system is a bigger challenge, because it makes its way through the system a little less easily than pellets.” But Inge has everything under control. “By placing a steel ball on the screw jacks, the meal shakes into the dosing tube more easily.” During pregnancy, the sows are given one type of pregnancy feed. When the sows come into the farrowing pen for one week for farrowing, Inge switches to farrowing meal. In this way, the farrowing process gets under way quickly and the sows continue feeding well. After farrowing, they are given more easily-digestible lactose feed, and once the piglets have been weaned and the sows go to the breeding stall, they are fed weaning meal in order to promote oestrus.