Racewell Speeds Up Weighing and Drafting on this NZ Pig Farm
23 January 2025
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By Aimee Johnston
Pleasant Point is aptly named if you’re a pig farmer. There’s not too much rainfall and the soil drains freely when there is. There’s certainly less rain than Helen Andrews was used to on the family dairy farm back in Yorkshire, England. Coming to New Zealand on her OE, Helen met her Kiwi husband Mark in Southland. Fast forward a few years to 2004 and the happy couple purchased a pig farm just north of Timaru, which they still call home.
Keeping Helen and Mark busy are two young daughters, 136 hectares of land, and a beef and pig operation, with a breeding herd of around 400 sows. They run a three-week batch system, where one week is spent mating, the next farrowing, and then weaning. Pigs are sent away on a weekly basis and they finish around 10,000 pigs a year.
“We use our Te Pari Racewell drafter to send and sort out 180, on average, pigs a week,” says Helen. “With our system, we’ve got around 600 pigs coming in on the morning of weighing and because that’s so many, when we were using the manual system there was lots of lower back pain from bending over to operate the gates.”
Working with constant back pain would be enough to make life at Pleasant Point distinctly unpleasant, and it’s one of the reasons the Racewell was designed in the first place. We wanted to help take the physical strain away from drafting so farmers can continue doing what they love for longer. The goal is to make life easier, which is why features like the dual operation controls have been added. With them, the drafter can be controlled from a central panel accessible from either side, or by the remote control. This allows the operator to move around and removes the need for another staff member to push pigs up from behind, which can be done by the operator with the remote in their hands.
“With the remote system and using the Gallagher weigh scales, which is really easily visual and able to be seen from a good distance away, I can move easily” explains Helen. Importantly, the racewell has a low entry height so the animals can move easily too. This is because unlike other drafters, our integrated cells are at the top of the weighing crate. It also means the drafter can be placed on uneven ground without affecting the accuracy of the weights.
The unique weighing configuration also allows the entry and exit to be kept separate from the weighing system. So if an animal is pushing up from behind, it won’t affect the weight of the animal inside the crate. Also, the gate is reactive so if an animal gets stuck, the gate will reopen and the scales won’t be activated until the gate is fully closed after the animal has moved inside. Not that this happens at Pleasant Point, with the pigs “moving nice and quietly, the flow is really good” says Helen.
This is an important point, too. Helens’ pigs are sold under the Freedom Farms brand, which comes with a set of standards governing animal welfare and environmental sustainability. Their farm has to be independently audited and certified, and they have to show their way of farming is kinder on the animals. And with help from the Te Pari Racewell, it is: “We’re seeing some great outcomes for our pigs" says Helen. “Less bruising, you’re able to identify your stock as they’re moving through and if there’s anything you’d like to take earlier or later…it’s a great system.”
The Racewell doesn’t just look after the farmer and the animals either. It looks after itself. With the load cells at the top of the drafter, there’s no risk of loadbar failures and no cable damage like you often see with the traditional setup. As expected from a Te Pari product, it’s also hot dip galvanised after fabrication and backed by a 10-year galvanising warranty. As Helen explains; “maintenance is nil or next to nil.” And if Helen does decide the family has had enough of pig farming, the Racewell’s are proven to hold their value, so it can be resold for a decent amount.
It’s not that Helen is looking to stop pig farming any time soon though. Indeed, with the Racewell making life easier, she’s as happy as a pig in (you know the rest). And what makes her really happy is the speed with which the pigs go through the drafting process: “The whole process has become quicker, more labour efficient, and we’re probably drafting those pigs in half the time that it was taking.”
Halving the drafting time is a massive gain. But it’s not about achieving time records (although that’s nice), it’s about what saving time enables, such as creating more time for everything else that needs doing on farm. Or maybe even time for a cup of tea (which is Helen’s preference) and a few minutes rest before the next task. Ultimately, it’s about making drafting easier in every way possible - for the farmer doing the drafting and the pigs being drafted. Speed is a big part of that.
“We found the racewell to be really beneficial in our system and highly recommend it to other pig farmers. The pigs love it. We love it as operators, and our staff enjoy using it.”
So there we have it - sounds like everyone is as happy as a…Te Pari Racewell user. Which is a rather pleasant point to end on.
