In many occasions, sows are housed in pens to reduce the cost of modification. No farrowing crates will be added and the old nursery will serve as a new location for gestation. When a farrow to finish operation is switched to an offsite early weaning unit, there will usually be a tripling of the sow inventory. In many cases, the old grower and finisher barns are used for gestation. Again, sows are kept in pens.
Sows are floor fed with a drop feeding system.
When an F-10 farrowing system was in use, we usually do not need to add any farrowing crates. With other systems, farrowing crate numbers need to be increased according to the sows inventory. The number of farrowing rooms and farrowing crates needed will be set according to weaning age. With a 16 day weaning program, the sow to farrowing crate ratio is usually 6 to 6.2. Some producers will prefer to be at 5.8 to give them some flexibility especially if they plan to use many nurse sows.