Articles - Management

Mr. Antonio Tavares, president of the COPA-COGECA, tells us about the current challenges for the European pig sector: the European Commission wants to ban tail docking within 3 years, but nevertheless, it does not plan legislative changes regarding castration.

The farm reports a problem of low prolificacy (mean annual live births of 11.91) and low fertility in summer, with a marked increase in acyclic returns.

Choice feeding is the best choice for piglets of different weights and / or ages to choose between two different feeds in order to meet their growth needs. The response is even better in farms with enteric problems.

This second part deals with the problems caused by not  recording properly the cause of abortions, sows and piglets deaths, nurse sows and hormonal treatments.

How do we get good workers? What must we do to keep them? And, mostly, what do I want on my farm and which workers do I need for that?

This first part deals with backward and impossible data, i.e. the sows that are no longer in the farm but still appear both in the management softwatre and the 100% delivery rates in gilts.

The cost of the staff entails between 6% and 7% of the total production costs of our pigs. Nevertheless, the staff influences this cost by 100%, because almost all the tasks on a farm are manual or controlled by the staff.

Exposure during acclimatization can be considered the first dose of a vaccine, and pre-farrowing exposure its booster.

This trick shows how to reduce the cleaning time of the fattening pens with a solid floor.

Open housing allow to increase the actual surface per weaned piglet, thus reducing hierarchy problems, and redefining the dunging, lying and feeding areas.

Milk supplementation shows much higher growth rates in the fattening stage, so its implementation would be interesting to regain body condition in animals with low birth weight.

An easy solution to store these feeders is to hang them in the corridor of their room. In this way, they do not stand in the way and they can dry well before being used again.

The number of sows that suffer some kind of leg injury is much higher than is apparent, and even more so in second farrowings.

Have you ever cleaned a lorry for the transportation of animals? It is not easy. Therefore, we always have to consider them dirty and we will use loading bays on the outside of the farm.

Energy intake based on body condition differs greatly from the energy adult sows require. Moreover, the NRC clearly overestimates the sows' maintenance requirements.

How to equip our old farm with a very simple but effective changing room.

If we decide to use foster sows to wean the "extra" piglets farrowed by hyper-prolific sows, we must decide which system is best suited to our farm and our management conditions.

Apparently, lameness problems amount to just 5% of the causes for sending pigs to slaughter...

Use the probe of an intrauterine AI catheter to provide colostrum.

Use a rake to pick placentas more easily.

Meeting the needs of the newly weaned pigs often proves to be difficult in many production settings.

Various strategies are discussed: offering up to 3 different types of feed, budget feeding, density of piglets per feeder space, ...

A system for cleaning the bowls in a practical, effective, and quick way without splashing all the farrowing pen or soaking the piglets.

Neonatal mortality does not only depend on the design of the farrowing crate, but also on genetic and management factors, as well as litter size, especially with the increased use of hyper-prolific dam lines.