Three development paths for a resource-saving pig farming model

China is a major pig-farming country, and pig farming consumes a huge amount of resources and energy. In today's strong push to build a resource-saving society, promoting resource-saving pig farming is China's future development direction. Below are several paths for resource-saving pig farming.

1. Growing grass to raise pigs, saving concentrated feed

At present, the feed for intensive pig farming in China mostly uses the "corn + additives" approach. Although this ration is simple to formulate, nutritionally balanced, and has a relatively low feed-to-meat ratio, it requires large amounts of corn and soybean meal imported from abroad. At present, some places have tried using partial green feed to replace concentrated feed for raising meat pigs, such as American chicory, compass plant, and alfalfa, which brings relatively good economic returns. According to a trial at the Dandong City Livestock Breeding Farm in Liaoning, on average each meat pig was fed 77.5 kg of American chicory and 214.5 kg of concentrated feed, and the return per pig was 32.92 yuan more than the control group; American chicory yields 6000 kg per 667 sq m, with a cost of about 0.07 yuan per kg. Using compass plant, alfalfa, and others also brings economic returns, and these experiences are worth promoting.

2. Reforming pig house design to reduce costs

Ventilation and warmth retention in pig houses are a pair of contradictions. In winter, some pig farms, especially in areas north of the Yangtze River in China, overemphasize warmth retention and adopt methods such as closing doors and windows, covering with ceilings, roofs, or plastic sheeting, and burning coal stoves inside the pig house. As a result, although the temperature rises, the air quality inside the house deteriorates, and toxic and harmful gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ammonia greatly exceed standards. After entering, the keeper finds the air pungent and irritating to the eyes, and sows and piglets develop respiratory diseases such as coughing. At the same time, because humidity also rises accordingly, under high-temperature and high-humidity conditions bacteria multiply easily, making piglets prone to diseases such as diarrhea, and the effect is counterproductive. A new plan for reforming warmth retention in pig houses is to distinguish between the pig house temperature and the piglet nursery box temperature. Pig Farm Power Network. The pig house temperature can be appropriately lowered, while the temperature inside the nursery box is maintained at around 30-32°C, and it can be appropriately lowered as the piglets' age in days increases. The temperature of the nursery house only needs to be 20-24°C. Therefore, in the farrowing house, a ceiling plus adjustable roof ventilation should be used, and nursery boxes should be set up in the nursing pens, using infrared or electric heating pads.

3. Reforming the technical plan for pig house waste discharge treatment

For the treatment of manure, urine, and sewage in intensive pig farms, the dry manure cleaning method is used, that is, manual manure cleaning. Inside the pig house, manure and urine are first separated, and the manure is gathered and transported by handcart to the manure stacking yard for processing and treatment. The pig house floor uses indoor shallow sewage ditches to reduce water used for washing the floor. Although this plan increases labor costs, it overcomes the shortcomings of the "water-flushing manure method." The daily water consumption of the pig farm can be greatly reduced, and the discharged sewage is easier to treat; the organic fertilizer produced by this method is of higher quality, and the income from organic fertilizer can be equivalent to paying the wages of the manure-cleaning workers; the investment in sewage ponds is saved, the land area occupied is small, and daily maintenance costs are low. Another important point in pig house design is to separate the sewage channel from the rainwater channel, which can greatly reduce the amount of sewage.