Narrator:

This is about as close to pig heaven as you can get: 3,000 sows are grazing, wallowing and farrowing on this open range pig farm at the base of the Porongurup Hills, in southwestern Australia. It's the biggest farm of its type anywhere in the world, and the animals are as happy as pigs in paddocks. This remarkable operation was set up four years ago by Nick Paspaley, the man who heads Australia's pearling industry. It's truly a case of pearls before swine.

Liam Flanagan:

The piggery is owned by the Paspaley Pearling Group of companies in Darwin, and when my employer Nicholas came down and had a look in the sheds, he didn't think it was [inaudible 00:01:00] or friendly to see animals confined. It's just a personal thing, and I must say, I've got a fair bit of sympathy with it as well.

We did have a small pilot farm in Albany that he also visited. He thought it was nice to see the sows walking around and doing their own thing, basically. He decided, and he ... probably forward thinking in that man a bit, because in Britain, especially, and the rest of Europe, tethering and the total confinement of animals is actually going to be against the law within the next couple of years. The general trend is that these things take a bit longer, but ultimately in Australia, they happen, as well.

Narrator:

The Great Southern Piggery is situated halfway between Albany and Mount Barker, about five hours' drive south of Perth. The climate in this part of western Australia is almost perfect for pig farming.

Covering 1500 acres, the site at Porongurup is the main breeding farm. The sows have their own huts to farrow in. The huts even come equipped with shade cloth awnings in case the west Australian summers get a bit fierce.

Each of the 3,000 sows is producing on average 20 pigs per year, and so far, the system is more than comparable to the production rates in the intensive indoor systems, which have dominated the industry since the Second World War.

Liam Flanagan:

There's no doubt that the sows are fitter, you don't have to intervene with the birth process. When the sows are confined inside they don't get exercise, so they tend to be unfit going into farrow. We don't have that problem.

We don't have lameness problems, because the sows are constantly standing, and they're urinating and their hooves are wet, so they tend to get soft hooves sometimes, and the hooves don't weigh them down, because they're not walking and they tend to get long claws, and we have no lameness at all down there, and-

Narrator:

So this is like a combination of the best of both worlds, really?

Liam Flanagan:

I think so. I think it's all going to have to go, because the public perception, the way that we produce food and confine animals, with television, and just education programmes, the public are aware of it now, and they'll just boycott people. They won't buy meat if they think it's being produced in a cruel system. I think we really have to be wary of that and also, the RSPCA are quite a strong group, and rightly so, we just can't do what we used to do to animals. We have to be more humane, if that's the right world.

Narrator:

The secret to open range farming is good stockmanship. A good supply of water and good electric fences.

Speaker 3:

The animals here, if the fences are kept up, and the huts are strawed up, and the wallows looked after, and maintained, the animals are quite happy. And yeah, they can be quite easy to manage.

Narrator:

Do they get sunburn?

Speaker 3:

Well, they seem to cover themselves in a bit more dirt, and it seemed to, their skin acclimatises to the weather. I guess it's a bit like a human being, being outside, compared to a labourer, I guess, working outside, laying bricks all day, and an office worker coming outside. I guess their situation is the same.

Narrator:

A good climate is essential to the success of an open range pig farm. But most important is a good supply of water. The Porongurup site has a freshwater lake, which is supplemented with boar water.

Speaker 3:

There is quite a good natural supply of water. Also, the farm is quite elevated there, for we can distribute the water to the animals on a regular basis, so they've got a good supply at any one point. During a winter's day, we may use about 40 to 50,000 gallons a day, and during the summer, they will probably go out to 60 to 70,000 gallons a day.

Narrator:

But not every local council is keen on the idea of having thousands of pigs wandering about their shire. In fact, the Great Southern Pig Company was rejected by one council, but accepted by the neighbouring council.

Speaker 3:

Initially, there was concerns, I think, and probably justly so, if they didn't know what the operation was going to be involved. But we were very fortunate to have the Mount Barker Shire, which encouraged the idea with a positive manner, and allowed us to get a foothold into the new system, which our company wanted us to develop, and therefore, we've been able to move towards a prospering industry, for the local region, and also for our company.

Narrator:

And the fears of some of the locals have been unfounded. After four years, there've been no problems. The pigs haven't escaped and gone feral, the smell's no different from any other farming enterprise, and the farm ha been a great boost to employment in the Mount Barker area. Great Southern even has its own fully equipped workshop onsite, to build and repair the array of equipment it needs.

Open range farming is labour intensive, a seven day a week operation that needs dozens of vehicles and workers to cover the 1,500-acre site.

Speaker 3:

We need about 25 people with the pigs, and there's about five in the workshops. So there's a workforce of about 30 people on this farm, because the pigs have to be cared for, seven days a week, so the crew is broken into three crews, so they work every third. So, therefore, the work during the week is completed by the Friday evening, and then, the weekend work is generally a maintenance, making sure the pigs are mitred and fed, and that everything's working and ready for the start of the following week.

Narrator:

Outdoor pig production's not as simple as it sounds. It's not just a matter of putting pigs in paddocks and letting them procreate. It's a highly scientific system, requiring accurate bookkeeping, at every stage of production. Each sow is individually numbered, and her fertility is tracked by computer. The same goes for the potency of the boars. Every farm worker has to keep track of the productivity of the herd.

Speaker 3:

This one, check up on, someone's going to have to manage nicely, and there, we're going to enter this one here. That's down here.

Speaker 4:

Okay.

Narrator:

When the farm first started, boars and sows were allowed to run free in the paddocks, but it was soon realised that some sows were not mating successfully. So, now, supervised mating areas have been set up, similar to the practises already established in indoor piggeries.

Speaker 3:

I figure, as we have to compare favourably with roof systems, regardless of whether they're inside or outside. So we're learning as they go. This just a part of our development, in trying to get the best, because they came from nothing.

Narrator:

The next step to improved production will be specialised mating centres, with individual stalls. This almost mirrors the intensive system. But the sows will only stay here for their mating day.

Speaker 3:

Now, we can individually use the boars, and the shows'll be weaned, and they'll be brought into wean sow paddocks, and then, when they're do to come on [inaudible 00:08:03], they'll be stalled for the day that they're mitred in the morning, mitred in the afternoon, and then, mitred next morning, and then, they'll be taken out and put back into their outdoor system.

That way, they're confident the boar had its best day to serve the south, and also, it allows us to introduce artificial insemination, in a controlled manner.

Narrator:

Inside each of these three clear spans are 400 piglets, making a total of 1,200 pigs. Now, that's just one week's production. So if you do the calculations over a year, you can see that this farm's producing more than 60,000 pigs a year. By the time they get to market, and fetch between $150 and $170 each, that makes a turnover of more than $10 million a year.

The newly weaned piglets spend seven weeks running about on straw, getting fit and fat before heading to Great Southern's Grower Finisher Complex at Narrogin, a couple of hours closer to Perth. The straw-lined clear spans cost about a quarter of a conventional shed, and apart form the food, the only other expense is the straw.

Speaker 3:

Each clear span about eight or nine bars, so that's about $350 to $400 per clear span, and that'll last about seven weeks, for when the piglets are then shipped out to Narrogin, and the clear span's cleaned out and pushed western, and brought back to the stadium.

Out of the clear spans at the moment, we're getting between 40 and 50 tonne of straw and manure mixed together. At the moment, we're stockpiling it, to compost it down, and then, we're going to spread it over the farm with our multi-spreader. I guess if there's a surplus of this product left over, it could be marketed by the company.

Narrator:

It's feeding time at Great Southern's Grower Finisher Complex, at Narrogin. The pigs spend 12 weeks here, before heading to market, at 22 weeks.

Liam Flanagan:

The computer just opens a valve automatically, and pumps the requirement of [inaudible 00:10:35], and that's determined by the number of pigs in the pen, and the age of the pigs, and it's calibrated onto a growth curve.

Narrator:

Like the operation at Mount Barker, the latest computerised data is also used at Narrogin for maximum efficiency. Every pig is numbered and fed according to age and size.

Speaker 4:

There you go. This shows the computer's making up a mix at the moment, for our Group A, which is the small pigs with [inaudible 00:11:01], where we looking before.

Narrator:

All the pigs at Narrogin are on liquid feed, rather than food and water. Once again, this is to ensure maximum efficiency of production.

Liam Flanagan:

One of the main advantages of liquid feed is that you have better food conversion ratios, so, for a lesser amount of food, they'll put on more weight. But the real advantage for us is, we have limited water access. We don't want the pigs to be drinking too much, for two reasons. If they drink too much water on a hot day, that will reduce the consumption, so it will slow their growth down.

But the main one is from an effluent output point of view. We only give them as much water as they need, so a [inaudible 00:11:38], is going to have to figure it, because that's one of your major causes in pounding effluent.

Narrator:

All up at any given time, there are 13,000 pigs at Narrogin, with more than a thousand going to market each week. In addition to supplying pork to the Australian market, the Great Southern Pig Company is now exporting to Southeast Asia, supplying 180 carcasses a month to Singapore.

Liam Flanagan:

We couldn't get nearer to the water. There's a limitation of 49 cubic metres a day, so I've got to be careful, and augment it with the boiler we've got.

Narrator:

By any standards, it's a remarkable operation. Liam Flanagan has made great Southern about as efficient as you can possibly get. The complex buys and trucks in its own grain, stores it in silos, and then, processes and makes its own feed.

Liam Flanagan:

We've got them from there, to the bucket elevator, down into the hammer mill-

Narrator:

And have recently spent $500,000 upgrading its own mash and pellet plant.

Liam Flanagan:

You're probably talking about 4.5 tonnes of sow a year, so we need about 15,000 tonne of feed in a year, and there can be savings of up to $50 a tonne. So, if you multiply that out, it's a fairly substantial sum. You can save $500,000, so the mill is too small, and when we put the sows outside, we couldn't feed them mash. Because we'd put mash on the ground, they waste it. They trample it, and they dung on it, and that sort of thing.

So we have to feed them pellets. The only way you can produce pellets is to buy a pellet press, so once we made that decision, we had to buy a boiler, to make steam, to make the pellets, and so on, and just went from there. It became a sort of an exponential thing.

Narrator:

Given that what goes in must come out, the Narrogin complex has its own on-site sewage treatment system. Liam Flanagan has ensured this is also as efficient as it can possibly be.

Liam Flanagan:

The quantity that we produce in a week, we have to do something with this, and also, we have to operate under the EPA licence, which doesn't allow us to spread on the property. It's got to be exported from the property, so we have to collect it like this, and someone comes in with a Bobcat and a truck twice a week, and takes it away.

Narrator:

Liam is a man who has his eye on every detail. Even a glance at the waste coming out of the piggery tells him about the state of his feed mill.

Liam Flanagan:

You see a bit of whole grain going through there? That means the screens in the hammer mill are getting worn. We need to replace the screens.

Narrator:

Right.

Liam Flanagan:

That's a good indication of the efficiency at the mill, as well.

Narrator:

The Great Southern Pig Company is certainly at the top end of pig production, but it's still possible for a farmer to get into the business, without a massive outlay of capital, and running pigs on straw inside clear spans now accounts for 10% of the national herd.

Speaker 5:

It's a roll up. You can pull out these shelters quickly, with non-skilled labour. We built these. We're real mugs, and we managed to get them up in a couple of weeks. No specialist equipment is required. They can go up quickly, and you can get a return on them quickly. The effluent is treated as a solid. You've still got to deal with these, and this is one of the outstanding issues. What are people going to do with the muck? It is a nutrient rich resource, and it will have soil conditioning benefits, but this is yet to be determined.

Narrator:

The concept of clear span pig production began in Canada, in the early 1980s, and came to Australia, a decade later. Three years ago, the Pig Research Development Corporation and Agriculture Western Australia decided to do the first independent research on this system, and so far, they've reared 2,000 pigs at the research farm, outside Perth.

Speaker 5:

Overall, we're fairly happy with the production system. The pigs have been extremely healthy. Another caveat: we started off with very high healthy status pigs, free of internal and external parasites, and we've, far as we can determine, we've managed to keep them that way.

The incidence of respiratory disease appears to be less in the shelters, and certainly, apart from proliferative enteritis, we've had no problems with enteric diseases. I guess everyone's waiting to see if the system will crash with use.

We've chosen to keep the costs as low as possible, and in these particular shelters, haven't put any concrete or stabilised flooring into them. Just on the sand, so there's obviously a concern that, one day, we might get a buildup of diseases on the sand.

Narrator:

The clear span system has been taken up by dozens of farmers in the grain growing areas of Western Australia, and is now catching on around the country.

Speaker 5:

I see that this particular shelter has a a role, perhaps in the Wheat Belt, where pigs always were reared. In Western Australia, we've tended to, sort of in the last 20 years, move closer to this one coastal plain, which, environmentally, is not going to be sustainable. If we go back over the range, into the wheat belt proper, you're getting into the broad acre areas, where odour is going to be less of a concern, where there's an abundance of straw, and where perhaps the shelters can fit into a mixed farming situation.

Narrator:

Dawson Bradford runs a mixed farm on the western edge of the Wheat Belt, a couple of hours' drive south of Perth. He started pig farming as a sideline with one sow 30 years ago. Now, he has a dozen clear spans, turning out $1.5 million worth of pigs a year. The clear spans now provide two-thirds of the total farm income, and it's certainly no longer a sideline.

Dawson Bradford:

It's probably our major income, even though we have seven and a half thousand acres, but its return on capital is by far the best, compared to all the other enterprises that we're in. That's wool, wheat, lamb production.

Narrator:

Dawson Bradford makes his own feed from barley and oats grown on the farm. He supplements this with brought in lupines. He's nowhere near the size of Great Southern, but he's still producing 200 pigs a week for market.

Dawson Bradford:

It's worked very well, because, in the ... we've got all the resources here that are required, for this sort of production, and it's working, which is an added bonus.

Narrator:

Dawson Bradford's operation, and the work by Agriculture WA, is showing the way of the future for pig production in Australia.

Liam Flanagan:

It certainly allows you to move, because once you build a conventional piggery, you can't do anything else with it. You can't keep cows in there, or you can't keep bees in there, it's only for pigs. But if you build these clear span shelters, you can demolish them, and you haven't got a huge capital input, and you can re-plow the land.

So I think, from a cost point of view, from a welfare point of view, there's a definite move towards it.