Specialist facilities

The research programme utilises a 150 sow herd that is operated from birth to bacon. A specialised animal metabolism unit allows digestibility of nutrients to be assessed as well as gaseous emissions.

Specialist pig rearing facilities

The research programme utilises a 150 sow herd operated from birth to bacon and a small scale facility.  The pig herd is complemented with technology which allows sows and pigs to be individually fed whilst group housed.  Specialist equipment also allows for the digestibility of nutrients to be measured from growing and finishing pigs as well as gaseous emissions via our specialised animal metabolism unit.  Flexible pen sizes can be adoped for both growing and finishing pigs and links with other departments within AFBI to enable multi disciplinary investigations to be undertaken e.g. from gut morphology and micro biota to eating quality.