Thread: Pig 'hotels' - Chinese farmers build upwards amid rush to expand

On Yaji Mountain in southern China, they say pigs will soon be living higher than ever before. Privately owned agricultural company Guangxi Yangxiang Co Ltd is already running two seven-floor sow breeding operations, and is putting up four more, two with as many as 13 floors, which will be the highest buildings of their kind globally.

Dubbed pig "hotels", the multi-storey, hi-tech pig pens have been tried in Europe but largely abandoned over consumer resistance to large, intensive farms - single storey or otherwise - or management difficulties.
Now, as China forges ahead with rapid industrialisation of the world's largest hog herd, high-rise housing is becoming a growing trend, despite its high cost.



Yangxiang will have 30,000 sows, compared with a more typical large one-level breeding farm of 10,000 sows.
It said it reduces the risk of pigs catching disease by managing each floor like a separate farm.

Staff work on the same floor everyday and do not move throughout the building.
Nor do the pigs.



New sows introduced into the building enter the top floor, and are then moved down to the relevant floor by elevator.

The ventilation system is also designed to prevent air circulating between floors, said manager Jiang Wei.

Air enters the buildings through ground-level channels and exits through a central exhaust.

High pressure extraction fans on the roof push the air out of a 15-metre chimney, spreading it far away from neighbouring buildings.

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Talk about living "high on the hog"