Page 34 of articles about management

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.

In a system with 2.35 farrowings/sow/year, more than 14 piglets born per farrowing, more than 11 weaned piglets/farrowing and around 1% of losses at weaning; what can we do to improve this?

Is the right strategy to get a farm stable, that is, control clinical signs reducing the economic impact of the disease; or should a farm adopt strategies to go “negative”? As for other questions in the epidemiological field, our answer is “it depends”.

The farrowing interval is one of the production parameters more commonly used as an indicator of the production efficiency of a farm.

Knowing how to make the most of space in our farrowing rooms is a key point, not only when using foster sows, but also for increasing the age at weaning. The farrowing pen is the most expensive pen at the farm, and we must obtain the maximum possible efficiency out of it.