One really must ask the question about why this has not been implemented a long time ago. Pigs are quite intelligent and certainly compare to dogs and cats in that regard and who are easily so trained.
One immediately gains in capital costs and time costs diverted to manure management. It also makes open pens convenient when the animals take care of their own waste removal. This is also obviously better for the animals.
Without question, hog manure is a much more difficult disposal problem than cattle manure and much more susceptible to release into natural waters. This helps to bring it under control a lot easier.
It is a good bet that most farmers believed the animals were untrainable. This tells us that we need to think this through a lot more carefully. Other benefits could easily flow from a tailor made program in the same way dog training has worked so well.
by Staff Writers
Farmers in southern
To keep their livestock from defecating into nearby rivers, a growing number of farms have established special "toilets" smeared with faeces and urine to attract the pigs -- and farmers say the results have been very encouraging.
"The pig toilets on my farm help me collect about 95 percent of all pig waste, making cleaning much, much easier," Chang Chung-tou, a pig farmer in Yunlin county, told AFP.
The Environmental Protection Administration, which will introduce a new fee on water pollution in the middle of 2010, plans to encourage other pig breeders to begin potty training.
"Apart from Yunlin, we have launched trial pig toilets in Changhua county (in central Taiwan
Taiwan has a total of about six million pigs, most of them raised on farms in the centre and the south.
One in five complaints about water pollution received by the administration is about waste from livestock farms.
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