Photo report: Thai farm - breeding pigs for Asia

Limpaiboon Farm is a multisite breeding and finishing farm, located in Prachinburi province, Thailand. Currently the farm consists of 7 locations, with 3 breeding and 4 grow-finishing locations. The farm is growing from 4,000 to 7,500 sows.

Owners of the complex are Mrs Naranit and her son Pawapat Pathopothiwat.

The breeding scheme used on the farm is devised by Prof Sakchai Topanurak, lecturer at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. He is the driving force behind the SiamPigs initiative – more about this a little later.

A look around at the central farm starts with the feed mill. The mill has a capacity of 100 tonnes per shift of 8 hours. For their own farms, the mill makes 8 different diets, based on soybeans, rice bran, premixes and sometimes probiotics.

The central farm location is a breeding facility, involved in both production of replacement gilts as well as multiplication for commercial production. The site has a total of 24 buildings – 4 out of these are farrowing barns.

The building is tunnel-ventilated with Munters equipment and the temperature for the sows can be kept at roughly 26°C.

Everything is done to make it as comfortable as possible for the young piglets in the farrowing areas. They have therefore been equipped with climatised zones for piglets, with plastic flaps so piglets can go in and out. Inside the covers, the temperature is kept at 30°C.

There's always something more interesting to be found in mama's trough. The piglets are weaned at 23-25 days, when they are between 6.5 and 7.3 kg.

A quick look outside of the buildings – the farm houses are surrounded by large lagoons. In here, tilapia and pangasius are being grown on pig manure, which is flushed out through a slope from underneath the pig houses. Every 6-7 months, the fish are harvested.

Back to the concept of SiamPigs, a Thai breeding programme revolving around resistance by welcoming certain pathogens under controlled conditions. Those breeding animals that survive will be used for further breeding. In addition, the programme states that each farm should have its own nucleus, and that 'growth' should also be part of the dam line. The result: replacement gilts with well-developed hams.

Gilts taking a bath.

The replacement gilts get inseminated at their 3rd oestrus. By this time they have developed powerful, round hind legs. Their large size hams are accentuated by a line running all over their backs.

They get fed dry ground feed from the own Limpaiboon feed mill, provided in hoppers.

It's gilt feeding time!

We jump into the car and drive to a nearby grow-finisher facility belonging to Limpaiboon Farm, about 5 km away from the central breeding facility.

Growers are kept here in pens of usually around 100 animals. At some point a part of it is sold to external farms.

The meaty shape of the hams and the line on their backs can also clearly be seen with all pigs.

Limpaiboon Farm reaches an overall Feed Conversion Rate of about 2.2 to 2.3, and overall Average Daily Gain of 770-780 g.

In 2015, Limpaiboon Farm made a good profit of 10 baht (€0.25) per kg of meat sold. This is about 2-3 baht more than a farm would get with conventional pigs.

The meaty, uniform character of the offspring is something both Pawapat and SiamPigs take pride in. After all, the animals thus provide meat the Thai market asks for.