NO WASH PIG TECHNOLOGY

The Municipality of Barotac Viejo in Iloilo Province is now promoting the technology of the ‘No Wash Pigs’ through out the municipality. According to Mayor Raul “Boboy” Tupas: “The technology is simple and can be adopted by households wanting to engage in smallscale pig growing-finishing projects. In fact, seashore communities that experience slow down in fishing activities have built small pigpens right beside their houses because the odor is manageable. Households in our congested areas have also adopted the technology for the same reason”.

The municipality has established a demonstration farm called the Integrated Farm System in Barangay Vista Alegre. It show cases farming technology in different ecologic zones, from steep slopes to flood plains as well as the production of livestock like pigs and Bulgarian Murrah Buffaloes.

In the no wash pig technology, the house is built with light materials like bamboo and nipa. The concrete floors are slightly inclined to force water and liquid waste to flow to the drainage. Then the floor is stocked with a bedding mix about 6 inches deep made up of an equal amount of river or beach sand, fresh rice hulls and carbonized rice hulls or rice hull charcoal. Adding 1 handful of salt per square meter is optional. This is to prevent mange and mites to inhabit the rice hulls. A better option is to regularly add dried kakawate (Gliricidia), neem (Azadirachta) and ipil-ipil (Leucaena) leaves. This option converts the bedding mix immediately into organic fertilizer in a shorter time after removal from the pen without danger of leaf and root burning from the salt.

After putting in the bedding mixture, 60-75 days old growers are transferred and cared for until market size. From the start, the only management routine is regular feeding and weekly spraying of the bedding with a probiotic solution made by dissolving concentrated Indigenous Microorganisms (IMO) at a rate of 2 cups per 15 liters of water. IMO contains a mix of a wide range of beneficial microorganisms like yeasts, lactobacilli, molds and others. Users and advocates of IMO attest to the benefits derived from regular use of this preparation.

The beddings are removed immediately after each cycle and aged for two to three weeks before being used as organic fertilizer for the vegetables and rice crop in the demonstration farm. During the aging period, microorganisms already contained in the bedding, speed up and complete the decomposition process, making it a superior organic fertilizer. Another option is to feed the bedding mix to earthworms which degrade them even faster.

For the last two years, the hog growing-finishing project had successfully completed about seven runs without mortality. The finished pigs range from 80 to 95 kilograms at 160 to 170 days which is within the industry standards. Mr. Edward Jamola and Mr. Vicente Baticbatic, staff of the hog project, claim that technology works and that the performance is even better than the normal practice of daily washing because the pigs do not lose energy trying to keep warm after each wetting.

Mr. Jesus Balila, Municipal Agriculturist and Demo Farm Manager said that the model was patterned after the model mentioned by the author in his radio program. Both Vicente and Edward were avid listeners and even without seeing the model developed by the author, immediately borrowed the idea and innovated their own pilot model comprised of two compartments. This proved successful and another two compartments were added.

At first, the pilot models used rock salt as specified in the Bicol model that the author based his experiments on. But since the beddings were immediately used as organic fertilizer after only a short rest period, there were some traces of salt burning on the leaves and roots of the plants applied with the organic matter. There were also experiences where the feet of the pigs were affected, similar to long exposure to seawater. So the salt was totally removed and replaced with dried leaves of kakawate, neem or ipil-ipil with a better effect on both the animals and later, the plants where the fertilizer was applied to.

The success has gained many adopters in the locality, including the members of the local Sanggunian and municipal employees, most of whom live in already thickly populated communities. Mayor Boboy Tupas said: “Many of our lower-ranked employees frequently visit the farm and observe newly developed technologies and adopt them. The No-Wash-Pigs are a hit because it has totally eliminated labor-intensive management. These employees simply feed and water their pigs in the morning and proceed to the office without even bothering to get back for lunch. They again attend to the pigs after office hours. Soon, the staff at the IFS will release their new innovation on alternative feeding which utilizes local feed ingredients grown right on the farm like aerial potatoes, cassava, legumes and fermented using pro-biotics. The aim is to reduce the dependence on formulated commercial grower feeds that has become expensive”.

“We have slowly but surely developed our Demonstration Farm to produce affordable and adoptable technologies for our people. The hog housing is made of bamboo and can be copied easily because of its low cost. We were also surprised with the success of the No-Wash-Pigs as we call them. The hog growing project is one of the money makers of the demonstration farm whose profits are plowed back to further expand the farming models being generated”, said Mayor Tupas.