IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/isu/genres/10273.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Feasibility of Hoop Structures for Market Swine in Iowa: Pig Performance, Pig Environment, and Budget Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Honeyman, Mark
  • Harmon, Jay D.
  • Kliebenstein, James
  • Richard, T. L.

Abstract

Hoop structures are large simple, tent-like shelters that can be used for pigs. The pigs are kept inside the hoop structure and large bales, e.g. straw or cornstalks, are used for bedding. A typical hoop structure (10 x 30 m) holds about 200 market pigs. Bedding is added every two to six weeks as needed until the pigs are marketed at which time clean out occurs. Three demonstrational trials were conducted in Iowa. The pigs were fed from 26 to 117 kg. Pig performance in hoops was acceptable (ADG=.83 kg/d, FE=3.42 kg feed/kg gain) with 9% poorer feed efficiency in winter. Growth rate was equal to or slightly more than typical for pigs in conventional confinement. Pig mortality was less than 3%. Average bedding use was 100 kg per pig in winter and 55 kg per pig in summer. The hoop manure can be composted readily. The bedding pack was variable with some areas actively composting on site in the hoop, generating temperatures up to 62 degrees C. An economic analysis showed similar total costs of production with the hoops having lower fixed costs and higher variable costs than in conventional confinement. The higher variable costs are due to bedding and extra feed and labor. Hoop structures offer a feasible alternative production system for sustainable swine production in Iowa and surrounding areas.

Suggested Citation

  • Honeyman, Mark & Harmon, Jay D. & Kliebenstein, James & Richard, T. L., 2001. "Feasibility of Hoop Structures for Market Swine in Iowa: Pig Performance, Pig Environment, and Budget Analysis," Staff General Research Papers Archive 10273, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:isu:genres:10273
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Xue & Mupondwa, Edmund & Panigrahi, Satya & Tabil, Lope & Sokhansanj, Shahab & Stumborg, Mark, 2012. "A review of agricultural crop residue supply in Canada for cellulosic ethanol production," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 2954-2965.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:isu:genres:10273. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Curtis Balmer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deiasus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.