Some thoughts on big pens

The big pen concept for growing/finishing pigs really caught on around 2003, so we have a good five years experience to fall back on. Numbers together range from 80 to 300 growers in the same pen. My consultancy work seems to come in waves and just having recently visited around a dozen units with uneven slaughter weight problems to be addressed, now the call-outs have changed to the pros and cons of the big pen system. Newcomers want to know what everyone else has been doing. Reasons for the