Day 290 - 30 Oct 96 - Page 25


     
     1        the main reasons why the company was no longer using, or
     2        was reducing the use of, dry sow stalls was because they
     3        were going to become illegal by 1988.
     4
     5        The reference for that is day 88, page 66, line 16.  There
     6        was a description of the dry sow stall on the same page.  A
     7        dry sow stall is a narrow metal-barred stall in which the
     8        sow can only stand up or lie down.  He said the floor is
     9        concrete or slats, or it can be both.  He said that if it
    10        was concrete it could be that the sow was lying in her own
    11        muck.  Basically, after the mating the sow was taken away
    12        from the boar and she would go into one of these dry sow
    13        stalls and remain there until she went into the farrowing
    14        crate, which is obviously nigh on the same conditions.
    15        That was day 88, page 67, line 7.  So she would be in the
    16        dry sow stall for three months, three weeks and three
    17        days.  He agreed that the sow could not turn around in the
    18        dry sow stall.  That was day 88, page 67, line 14.
    19
    20        He was asked about tethers and he said that none of the
    21        suppliers used tethers, but ten years ago a few of them
    22        would have been using them.  Page 67, line 54.  He said,
    23        "We, as a family, have always been against tethers", and
    24        that they had had specifications about tethers for about
    25        five or six years.
    26
    27   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Can you just help me on one thing?  It may be
    28        that it was not dealt with, that there is an obvious
    29        answer.  The sows go to the boar twice a year he said?
    30
    31   MS. STEEL:   Yes, I think it is slightly more, but roughly.
    32
    33   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   That is what I want to know.  If one does a
    34        bit of arithmetic you have got your three months, three
    35        weeks and three days, whatever it was.
    36
    37   MS. STEEL:   He said that the month consisted of 30 days.  When
    38        you work that out.
    39
    40   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  But I do not think it will make any
    41        substantial difference to the point I have.  Then one adds
    42        on 24 days.  So you have got, as near as makes no
    43        difference, about four and a half months?
    44
    45   MS. STEEL:   Three months, three weeks, three days is virtually
    46        four months, is it not?  And then another twenty...
    47
    48   MR JUSTICE BELL:  It is only a few days over.
    49
    50   MS. STEEL:   I think, the four days for weaning, he said that 
    51        they came on to heat about three days after that.  So that 
    52        would be another 27 days.  So it is the best part of five 
    53        months, I think.
    54
    55   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is not much difference.  It may be four
    56        months and three weeks, but in any event there is at least
    57        a month, and probably five weeks, left of the six months
    58        that the sow goes to the boar twice a year.  Is the answer
    59        to that that the sow goes to the boar soon after the
    60        piglets are weaned?

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