The Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food discovery centre lists expected farrowing or birthing dates for sows housed in the swine research barn at the University of Manitoba's National Centre for Livestock and the Environment on its website at farmandfooddiscoverycentre.ca and invites the public to visit the centre while the piglets are still with their mothers.

Guy Robbins, the centre's visitor services manager, says farrowing generally occurs over four to five days usually around the middle of the month and the pigs will be in the farrowing area for three to four weeks before they are moved to the weanling area after weaning.

Guy Robbins-University of Manitoba:

We get a very good reaction from I think practically everybody who comes to the centre.

Everybody loves to see the baby piglets and then behind that that they get an appreciation of the science and the technology that's involved in the rearing of the pigs.

The demographic of it is that we get a lot of school parties that come through.

We very much get a lot of families coming through and then we can go right up to, we get a lot of grandparents for instance coming around with their grandchildren, taking them around.

They may have worked in the industry and are introducing their grandchildren to farming and so on so basically we get from kindergarten to seniors.

We also get a lot of touring parties of seniors and clubs and those kinds of people coming through too.

Robbins estimates 5,000 to 6,000 have passed through the Bruce D. Campbell farm and Food Discovery Centre since it's opening and as awareness of the centre builds, he says, the goal is to gradually increase attendance to around 30,000 per year.

For UniversityNews.Org. I'm Bruce Cochrane.