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?
