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Have you ever had to repurpose or use a part on the farm to raise pigs in a different phase than the one for which it was designed? Or have you had to adopt a different feeding system than the one originally designed for that room or production phase? Surely, for many readers, the answer is yes.
The most common case is changing the feeding system: with computerized liquid feed management, many farmers have replaced dry (ad libitum) feeding with rationed liquid feeding.
On rare occasions, as was the case here, the opposite conversion has been made: from liquid to dry feed.
In this case, the farmer decided to use facilities previously used for finishing for the final growth phase of the replacement gilts.
Since he did not want to use liquid feed, but rather dry, he devised this very simple dry feeding system, which allows the animals to be fed a semi-ad libitum ration.
A large PVC pipe was placed and fastened over the existing wet feeder. The bottom part was raised high enough off the bottom of the feeder so that the pigs could access the feed in it and the top part was connected to the line that brings the feed from the silo.
The tube can contain a certain volume of feed, which the farmer knows. In the morning, the feed delivery system starts up and fills all the "tubes". At a certain time of the day, the system shuts down and the pigs continue to eat until all the contents of the tube are consumed.
We can call this system "semi-ad libitum" or "rationed ad libitum", since the animals only have feed available for a certain number of hours per day.