With A 5,000-Sow Expansion, Bible Pork marches on as The Maschhoffs exclusive gilt multiplier

Production manager Kevin Van Dyke in a new gestation facility at Bible Pork 4 in Louisville, IL.

When The Maschhoffs announced its plan to buy Land ‘O Lakes’ swine operation in 2005, the folks at Bible Pork found themselves at a pivotal point in their business as well. As the exclusive gilt multiplier for The Maschhoffs, Bible Pork had grown to three farrowing units and 7,000 sows. Providing gilts for The Maschhoffs’ expansion would require a 70 percent leap in Bible Pork’s capacity.

“They came to us with a request, and we decided to build to accommodate their needs. It was important to us to continue with this great relationship we’ve had all these years,” says Matt Bible who owns the Louisville, IL, operation with his wife, Jan, and his father and mother, Jerry and Carolyn.

Another key reason for expanding to 12,000 sows is to provide opportunities for the future. “My kids are getting older and showing interest in the operation. We are now getting to the size where they could consider joining it someday,” says Matt, who has two sons and a daughter.

Bible Pork’s hired talent –now including 51 employees under the guidance of lauded production manager Kevin Van Dyke – was also poised to accept the challenge of managing more animals.

“We’ve hired excellent people,” says Matt, who stresses how important employees are to his company’s overall success. “From precise breeding to maximizing wean age, everyone has to be thinking and engaged to be successful. They have to take leadership and want to do well,” says Matt.

This past June, Bible opened the doors to Bible Pork 4. The new unit has space for 5,000 sows, with four large barns, connected by long hallways. One building is a gilt developer unit with a Parity-0 farrowing room, two nurseries, a pig holding area, a heat “no-serve” observation room, a boar contact/heat check area and two gilt development rooms. Other buildings include two gestation barns, plus a mature sow farrowing facility. There is an office in front of the gestation barns.

Bible Pork 4 was designed with Skov ventilation. The European system controls air quality by pulling air up and out of the building through several chimneys. Farmweld designed customized stainless steel transition boxes that secure the ventilation tubes between the slats and the chimneys.

The facilities were designed mostly by Van Dyke and Dr. Jim Lowe, The Maschhoffs’ director of health and production services. Dr. Bradley Wolter, The Maschhoffs’ director of production technology, also offered input as did Farmweld’s Frank Brummer, Brian Miller and Kevin Schnarre.

Farmweld equipment—including gating, farrowing crates, gestation stalls (with stainless steel troughs and bolt-on feed tubes), heat check pens with quick-latch gating and cull sow load outs—is installed throughout the facility. Sow comfort and condition, pig production and operator ease and safety were all important in the layouts and selection of equipment.

“We knew we wanted to differentiate sows by sizes in the barns,” says Van Dyke. In order to give the largest sows more space and yet still provide good space efficiency across the entire facility, Bible Pork requested that Farmweld design customized 24” wide gestation stalls for Parity-2 or higher sows and 23” wide stalls for Parity-0 and Parity-1 sows.

All the gestation stalls are 7’3” in length— three inches longer than standard. They have step-through artificial insemination gates to keep gilts and sows in place but allow good access during breeding. Farmweld added a special plate and relocated certain bolt holes in order to accommodate Bible Pork’s feeding system.

Farmweld also designed customized, hinged “chase gates” for the gestation barns. Van Dyke says these can be moved as needed and are very efficient for moving pigs around in the facility. “Farmweld worked very hard to meet our needs,” Van Dyke says.

For the farrowing barns, Van Dyke and Bible selected Farmweld’s Eurostyle Farrowing Crate. Very few changes to the standard design were made because Bible and Van Dyke were extremely satisfied with the Farmweld crates they had installed in older barns. Both Bible and Van Dyke point out the excellent durability of Farmweld’s solid rod finger crate design. Earlier they experimented with stainless steel farrowing crates but were disappointed in how they held up. “The doors would get bent and then we couldn’t get the gate rods to line up,” says Van Dyke.

The Bible family from left: Jerry and Carolyn; Braxton, 17; Quinn, 12; Jan; Carrsan, 9; and Matt.

“Farmweld’s quality is bar none the best,” says Matt. “Craftsmanship is superior. From Kevin, our sales rep, all the way through those in shipping, Farmweld has been outstanding to work with. We haven’t had to call up and complain about anything. On a 5,000 sow job, that is huge,” Matt says.

Van Dyke says the Farmweld EuroStyle Farrowing Crate gives him peace of mind when it comes to employee safety because the split rump bar opens both directions instead of just toward the sow. That way one side of the rump bar can be opened, allowing the technician assisting the sow to move away if she makes a sudden movement.

Matt and Van Dyke, who is a past recipient of the “Manager of the Year” award by the Carthage Veterinary Service, Ltd., hope to reach 26.5-28 pigs per sow per year (PSY) in the next year or so and 30 PSY in five years. They say they are always on the lookout for new techniques to improve sow condition, lactation intakes and pig death loss.

“Everyday our operation must adjust,” says Matt. “You won’t get very far if you just get in a rut. You always have to be thinking ahead.”