Tour 3
Pig breeding in Switzerland:
Unique in the world
Destinations
Visits to a nucleus breeding farm, a finisher farm, SUISAG and the Swiss test-station for pigs.
Important: Do not have contact with other pigs for at least 48h before the tour!
Descriptions
Nucleus breeding farm Schwizer
Farm Schwizer is an important nucleus breeding farm with 120 Swiss Large White and 20 PREMO® (terminal sire) sows and raising of the gilts and boars. We will visit the farrowing barns with 2 x 20 free farrowing pens. A second topic will be the castration of piglets with an isoflurane anaesthesia device.
Finisher barn Kurath
Farm Kurath is a typical Swiss finisher farm with a lot of space for each finisher pig and a part of each pen is an outdoor area. Only a small part of the floor is slatted. As tail docking is banned in Switzerland we will see finisher pigs with tails. For hygiene reasons we will not enter the barn but can see the outdoor area and the pigs, of course.
SUISAG
SUISAG, a pig breeding organization in Switzerland, produces and sells semen from two AI stations and runs the Swiss health service for pig production. After a barbecue with pork meat, SUISAG and the Swiss pig breeding program will be briefly presented.
Swiss performance testing-station for pigs
At Sempach, SUISAG runs the national performance testing-station of the breeding program with 1300 places. We will visit the barns with Schauer feeding stations that record the individual feed intake of each pig. Finally, we will visit the meat quality lab, where routine measurement of pork quality traits (e.g. intramuscular fat, drip loss, cooking loss and shear force) is performed weekly and where research on meat quality occurs.
Sponsors
Tour sponsor: SUISAG
Schedule
07:30 Bus departs from Davos in front of Conference Centre
09:30 Visit to nucleus breeding farm Schwizer in Walenstadt
11:00 Departure from Farm Schwizer
11:15 Visit to finisher barn of farm Kurath in Walenstadt
11:45 Departure from Farm Kurath
13:30 Barbecue and visit to SUISAG and Swiss test-station for pigs in Sempach
15:30 Departure from SUISAG
16:30 Arrival at train station Wädenswil; In Wädenswil, there is an option to take the train to Zurich Main Station/Zürich HB and Zurich Airport/Zürich Flughafen (approximately 40 minutes)
20:00 Arrival in Davos