Design of Nursery

 Nursery pig farming has been an important problem in production. The changing of feed and grow environment bring tremendous stress on piglets since they just weaned. Piglets have poor disease resistance system because maternal antibodies subsided and piglets did not form their own antibodies.

All these factors lead to weight loss, diarrhea and other undesirable phenomena after weaning. To solve these problems, except add nutrition, pig design is also an important aspect. Good design can reduce weaning stress and make piglets adapt to the new environment as soon as possible. Based on South climate in China, we describes the advantages and disadvantages of various designs nursery.

1. Overall planning of building

1.1 Nursery site

Nursery site should pay attention to factor as below: ① high altitude and dry, groundwater level should above 2 m or more. Low-lying ground and higher groundwater w places are easy to breed mosquitoes and microbes. ② nursery should be down the wind of boar and upwind of fattening house. We would better use three-spot rearing, namely pigs, nursery and fattening raising far away from each other . Three separate production stages in three separate places. ③ construction place requires a large area to facilitate the building and equipment layout reasonably. Terrain have l% ~ 3% slope to facilitate drainage, but the maximum should not exceed 25%. ④ sunny leeward, in order to facilitate cold in winter.

1.2 nursery GFA counting

Nursery GFA is determined according to farm size and production processes. After confirming the nursery quantity, we can calculate pigsty area based on each head of nursery pigs accounted for 0.3 ~ 0.4 m2 area. Taking into account the nursery care time and conservation field disinfection time, we can calculate nursery floor area according to the bar area nursery utilization factor of 70%.

1.3 Graphic Design and orientation of nursery 

Nursery orientation related to ventilation, lighting and sewage effect and mainly determined according to the local main wind direction and sunlight conditions. In the south, barn should be arranged according to the local summer main wind direction, in order to enhance ventilation and avoid solar radiation. Usually barn should toward to the south or south east, south west in 45 degree.

Nursery can be divided into single row and double-row according to the choose of farm production process.

Single row nursery generally located near the north wall of the feeding aisle in one line. This type has small span and simple structure, but low utilization of pig house. If the pig span can be added to 9 m or more, it can be used for bed pig production fermentation process. The length of the construction according to the situation of farms, and generally not less than 24m, if too short it will increase the construction costs. But the maximum should no more than 50 m, or not conducive for the management and insulation.

Double row means nursery is arranged in two rows. At the same time channel can be divided into double row discounted single, double row dual-channel, three-channel double row. Wherein the optimal choice is double row of single-channel .The design house utilization is high. The design requires right span as 9.2 m, length of 4.0 m and with complete or incomplete wall in the middle of the barn for easily all in all out and disinfected.

The double-row barn is the best solution in the current variety of nursery pig design. With high using efficiency and more convenient for piglet feeding and management