Meat + Poultry - October 2016 - 66

PROCESSOR PROFILE

UP TO THE
CHALLENGE

The fifth generation of
Beelers believes in raising
pigs the same way the
first generation of Beelers
raised them, making animal
welfare a top priority.

66

Once Beeler's made
the decision to do
things differently,
challenges on the
production side
presented themselves,
but the company
was dedicated to
relearning how to
raise pigs the way
they were produced
50 years ago.
However, there were
some differences that
Beeler's needed to
account for.
"We were trying
to do this on a larger
scale basis," Beeler
says. "So it's not like
we just had 30 to 50
sows to contend with, we had 2,000. So we
were trying to see if we could build a larger
welfare-friendly farm and make it work, and
there were a lot of challenges."
Once in production mode, those challenges
began to pop up. The first thing Beeler learned
pertained to the genetics of the sows. The
previous operation relied on gestation crates
and without them the sows had difficulty
adapting to large social groups, Beeler says.
"There was a lot of fighting and they got too big,
so we had to select a different genetic strain."

MEAT+ POULTRY | 10.16 | www.meatpoultry.com

Beeler's decided on Duroc boars from
Europe crossed with European-based females
to get the temperament they needed for the
welfare friendly environment. Beeler says they
found the sows to be more docile and friendlier
in the open gestation system. "Their mothering
characteristics were better in a box where they
were not confined to crates," he explains.
Along with a new strain of animal and
the elimination of gestation crates, Beeler's
stopped using farrowing crates. At the start,
Beeler's saw a pre-weaning mortality rate of
50 to 55 percent. Beeler knew that a mortality
rate that high would not only put the farm
out of business, but was also inhumane. After
six months of observation and study, Beeler's
came up with a redesign.
"The goal was, the sow is supposed to be
able to stand up, turn around, be able to move,
and lay down in full recumbency," Beeler says.
"So how were we going to accomplish that and
yet save pigs?"
The newly designed box gave sows the
ability to physically behave in accordance
with the goals set forth. Protective bars were
fitted to what Beeler refers to as a maternity box.
The box gives the sow the room to exhibit the
necessary behaviors, but the bars protect the pigs
due to the sow's ability to easily step over them.
"Those bars are placed in there in such a
way that there is only one way for her to lie
down and that is between the bars. And that
gives the pigs a chance to get out of her way,"
Beeler says.
The maternity/farrowing boxes were raised
on wire, like the conventional style, allowing
for nesting and keeping the sow and her pigs
dry. Once the boxes were designed, remodeled
and constructed to the spec necessary, the
farrowing performance improved dramatically,
Beeler says.

PRODUCT PROFILE
Beeler's strives to provide quality, natural,
antibiotic-free, animal welfare friendly
products - and in the case of its new Heluka
line, all of that and non-GMO - to all of its
customers. But most importantly, Beeler's
knew that it was all for nothing if the pork
doesn't eat well and taste good.
"Our philosophy was we can make all the
label claims in the world, we can tell people
it's antibiotic free, we don't use growth
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