Open air houses for German finisher pigs

Idealism for more welfare and a better environment made the German family Ahrens-Westerlage invest in open air pig houses for their finisher pigs. Since last year, this resulted in a bonus of roughly €9 per animal. The Ahrens-Westerlage farm in Neuenkirchen, Lower Saxony, Germany, is a mixed farm with 1,500 finisher pigs. About 1,000 finishers are kept in PigPorts, 500 are kept in conventional pig houses. The farm comes with 90 ha of grounds, of which 65 ha is owned. The arable part is used