Research conducted at the Prairie Swine Centre has shown a few simple drinker adjustments can dramatically reduce the volumes of water wasted by pigs as they drink.
The water that comes into a barn through the drinker system accounts for an estimated 60 to 70 of the total water used by the pigs in a room.
Research Scientist in Applied Ethology Dr. Harold Gonyou says a series of studies on how pigs waste water has shown adjusting the height of the drinkers as the pigs grow and, in most barns, reducing flow rates can save as much as a liter per pig per day.
"The most common way that we provide water to growing finishing pigs is with what's called a nipple drinker.
They put their mouth on that, it activates it, the water runs and they drink from it. However it also could run out of their mouth as well, so you do see a fair amount of wastage.
In our study we saw up to 45 percent of the water flowing being wasted. We assessed how pigs were drinking from the drinkers and what management issues were affecting the amount that was wasted.
We found that if you have a high flow rate, so the water was running very quickly, that you had a high degree of wastage.
We also found that if the nipple was not at the right height for the pig, if it was too low, then the pigs could not drink comfortably from it and you would lose a lot of water as well.
If we manage both the flow rate of the nipple and adjusted the height of the nipple to match that of the pig, we found we could reduce water wastage by 20 percent and that's similar to what you get out of many of the water bowls that would be used."
Dr. Gonyou says reducing water wastage offers several cost benefits.
He says producers can save on the cost of bringing the water into the barn, on the amount of storage required for the manure and on the cost of hauling and applying the manure to the land.
