Articles - Management

The use of plastic and gravel to prevent the growth of vegetation around the perimeter of the barn. This is a simple strategy that will also decrease the chances for rodents to enter the facilities and it will help improve external barn biosecurity.

The most productive farms are not always the best. We must also bear in mind the weaned piglet's weight and the sow's feed intake.

Using the year the sows enter in production for the sow's identification number.

The trick consists in selecting the appropriate foster sows and marking them on the back with the maximum number of pigs that they can take care of.

After checking that our farm loses days in the servicing of the gilts, the detection of empty sows housed in yards and the culling (sending of the sows to the abattoir), we propose a package of measures…

On this farm, the oral drug is introduced in a 1-litre bottle hanged upside-down (like a drip) from the cart used for tending to the piglets.

There are different systems for carrying out this water delivery. Probably, the most common one is with a hose, but sometimes, the sows' troughs are not facing the corridor but the wall.

This trick explains how to obtain foster sows for the adoptions.

Let us see the case of a farm with 5 non-productive days more than the average of the farms with the same profile. Where are these days lost?

We need to know, at all moments, which amount of feed are the sows eating, so we will weigh the feed at least once per week.

Studying the pattern of traffic flows for your production site is important when designing your “bioexclusion” game plan.

Achieving a high prolificacy and knowing how to take advantage of it (transform it into weaned piglets) is vital for the productivity of a sow farm.

This system does not provide an improvement in the production data, but a saving in energy costs and a better use of the resources in general.

The use of these nests help create two well-differentiated areas: a warmer one for the piglets and a cooler one for the sows.

The aim is to avoid dehydration during the first days after weaning to improve feed intake.

Many of these tools are difficult to clean and, in many cases, they may be damaged by water, soap, and disinfectants.

Quick and simple system for identifying if we have an excessive yeast proliferation.

The results reveal that the stress that the sows due to excessive interventions around the moment of the farrowing causes a clear increase in the pre-weaning mortality.

It is very important that all the staff on the farm can know quickly what is going on in the farrowing quarters, because in this way everybody will be able to carry out the daily duties in this area.

Frequent deaths and cases of disease with typical “diamond-skin” lesions appeared in fattening pigs although they were vaccinated against Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae.

We saw aggressiveness in the sows, and we suspected that it could have been caused by the handling around the moment of the farrowing. We decided to register and analyze the data relative to the handling in order to confirm our suspicions.

In many cases, the use of materials that lessen the piglets' boredom helps to control the problem.

It is common to see that there are many farms on which the gestation of the sows entered in the farrowing quarters is not correctly managed. How much space / batch would be losing a farm that enters systematically a 10% of sows / batch one week before than the appropriate date?

In order to avoid that the pigs urinate and defecate in the trough we can place approximately a metre of pipe on the floor parallel to the trough and tightened with two clamps.