Page 13 of articles about management in Articles

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.

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.

We hear a lot of talk about optimizing profitability in grow-finish through reducing standard deviation of marketed weights and aiming that tighter weight group at the profit optimal average weight at the time of marketing. It’s a bit like playing darts, you want the darts to be in tight group but it is also necessary to be near the bull’s eye on the target.

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.

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?

Each batch of sows is identified with a different colour, so we will only have to look at the colour of the pegs

With a water tank above the pregnant sows cages we ensure their water supply.

By ear tagging a gilt in the group with its birth date we will always know the age of the replacement gilts.

There are many home-made options that allow us to carry out this so important technique on our farms.

The weaning-to-service interval is a short but vital period regarding the productivity of the sow.

Having a piglet feeder and a lamp in each farrowing pen avoids the annoying moving of these items between rooms and sometimes between buildings.