Page 22 of articles about management in Articles

Colostrum offers 3 essential properties to the piglet: very useful energy source (vital for generating movement and avoiding temperature loss), immune supply (protects against germs that the piglet begins to come into contact with) and natural growth factors (complete the maturity of the piglet).

For the animals to be comfortable it is important to know their needs. The more needs that we can fulfill the more productive the animal will be.

In order to carry out this economic analysis we have kept in mind the variables between the two types of weaning in the different phases: site 1 (reproductive sows), site 2 (weaning), and site 3 (fattening).

Both for heat detection and for mating, maximum efficiency is achieved if the sow is well stimulated.

A breeding chart would be like a type of computer without wires, screen or keyboard.

Normally the productivity of the sow is valued for the number of litters/sow/year multiplied by the number of weaned piglets per litter.

The most important way of examining the conditions of a building is using ones senses, since these might tell you immediately, whether an environmental problem is present.

With this article we begin the publication of a series of three unpublished articles by José Barceló for pig333.com on the age at weaning. José gave us the articles a few days before his death. As a way of paying homage to him we have decided to publish them posthumously without any alterations.

Piglets are born with very limited energy reserves: compared to other newborn mammals, they have much less energy stored per kg liveweight.

The use of pulped food incites consumption and allows a smoother transition from milk to feed.

We may have some highly efficient vaccines, but we shouldn’t forget that for their application we must obtain good diagnostic information, and that in all cases we should not lose sight of good management and a good control of the concomitant diseases.

In natural conditions, there are seasonal fluctuations of availability of food and the earliness or delay in the onset of breeding is related to food levels.

Between 1995 and 1997, at the beginning of an epizootic called “maladie de l’amagrissement du porcelet” (MAP), it was observed that the farms that were most affected and that had the most losses, generally presented obvious deviations from what we would consider to be a suitable management of the animals and facilities. This is why Dr. François Madec made a list of management practices with the aim of improving the anomalous situation observed.

There are several decisions to make before attempting an eradication programme. Firstly, which antibiotic should we use? If we have had the disease on the farm for some time, the Brachyspira will have been exposed to possibly a number of drugs and may have reduced susceptibility to some of them.

Tail biting is a typical non-specific reaction to a deterioration of the environmental conditions.

Pigs have a panoramic vision of 310º and binocular vision of 35-50º (Fig. 1). This means that compared to humans, pigs prioritise their lateral monocular vision and this increases their panoramic vision (greater capacity for detecting possible danger, food, other pigs, etc) and decreases their bifocal vision (greater difficulty for calculating distances).