Piggeries

Piggeries in this day and age can almost be called an exact science. It is an absolute specialized farming activity that needs intense management and advanced modern systems to be sustainable in the long term.

MALU consists of two 1200 sow unit Piggeries (PAX and Matlabane). The construction of our third piggery (Boland) started January 2020, we aim to stock this piggery with the first 200 sows mid 2021. All three of these farms use modern equipment and pig pens.

We are proud to say that our piggeries comply with the highest biosecurity measures. Both our piggeries are Pork 360 accredited. Furthermore, MALU Maltlabane is compartmentalised.
The aim is to have MALU Boland compartmentalised as well as obtaining High Health status.

To ensure that MALU can present pigs to be slaughtered on a weekly basis, sows must be served; piglets must be born and weaned every week. As you can imagine this is a weighty task and requires a well-organised team.

Since 2019 MALU joined forces with Danbred Africa. Our sows are artificially inseminated with Danbred Duroc terminal semen. The semen has a lifetime of about 6 days stored at 17°C.

After a pregnancy of 115 days, the sows are moved to a farrowing house and within 2 to 5 days the piglets are born. Our average litter per sow is 13,2 piglets with a weight of 1,4kg per piglet. Thanks to modern housing, good feed and management we are fortunate to wean 11,8 piglets per litter. Our sows farrow 2,52 litters per year to produce 29,6 piglets per year. When the piglets are weaned after 21 days in the farrowing house they weigh 6,5kg per piglet.

On the day the piglets are weaned the sow and her piglets are split. The sow will go to the service house and 4 to 5 days later she will be artificially inseminated again. Her piglets are moved to the weaner house where they are housed in groups of 50 piglets per pen. They will stay there for 6 weeks and be fed 2 different rations of feed. The piglets will be 61 days old by now and they will weigh 24kg.

Now they will move to a grower house where they are housed 25 pigs per pen. They are fed 2 different rations up to the age of 150 days when they weigh 100kg and are ready to be presented for slaughter.

PIG FEED RATIONS

Different rations are fed to every group of pigs at MALU. Every group has different feeding needs that must be satisfied.

Please see the feed mill page for more information on all the different rations

Housing of our pigs

Our MD, Marius often refers to our housing of our pigs, as a five-star luxury pig hotel. All houses have a roof and insulation for the cold and heat. The floors are slatted and have advanced drainage systems in place to make sure our pig housing does not become a pigsty. We have automatic feeding systems in all of our houses, it’s like having breakfast in bed every day. Our service, farrowing and wean houses are all temperature controlled to make sure our pigs are always as comfortable as can be.
Every week a house in every department are thoroughly cleaned and sanitized before the next group of pigs arrive for their stay.