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A Lancashire farming partnership has come up with a novel way of reducing energy costs on their pig unit. David and Leonard Goodier have installed a heat pump to extract latent heat from the air to warm water-filled creep mats in a new 32-place ARM farrowing house.The house is part of a major investment programme in their 275-sow breeding and finishing unit at South View Farm, Greenhalgh, near Preston, to make it as efficient as possible by improving production and cutting costs.
The unit’s overall energy costs are £7,000-£8,000 annually and, since creep heating takes a large proportion of this, they are looking to make considerable savings.
The Goodiers have been told that for every unit energy put in they will get four out.
Situated outside the house, the pump will work in temperatures as low as minus 20ºC. “We expect savings throughout the year,” commented Leonard Goodier. Although the heat pump cost £6,000 they are expecting it to pay for itself within a couple of years.
There are also 40,000 broilers on the farm and the Goodiers were told by a poultry industry adviser that this form of heating was already being used by chick-rearers. They thought that if it works for chicks, why not pigs?
The new ARM house is already energy efficient so heat lamps have been done away with apart from providing some additional warmth for a few hours to help the piglets dry off immediately after birth.
The Goodiers will be monitoring house performance under the Farmex data-logging system which is fitted as standard to all new ARM pig buildings.
| David Goodier inside the new ARM farrowing house. The heat pump warms water to heat the creep mats, doing away with the need for creep lamps. | David Goodier with the heat pump outside the new ARM farrowing house. The heat pump extracts latent heat from the air. Considerable savings in electricity are anticipated. |
ARM Buildings Ltd
