Bacon Bits - Vol. As hog production expands in Western Canada, large intensive units are going up across the prairies. In Alberta, the size of some new or expanding facilities exceeds 1,000 sows. Most of these barns are equipped with gestation stalls. Stalls enable producers to monitor sows individually and control their feed intake.
Stalls are clean, require no bedding and provide an economic use of space.
In addition, stalls prevent aggression between sows, which is inevitable when pigs are mixed. However, gestation stalls have been criticized from a welfare standpoint. This criticism can be traced back to the Brambell Report, which was commissioned by the British government in 1965. These are repetitive and unvarying behaviours often linked to frustrating situations. The behaviours may or may not help pigs cope with their environment.