Knowing the sows' age
Using the year the sows enter in production for the sow's identification number.
Page 34 of articles about management
Marking foster sows on the back with the number of piglets to adopt
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.
Assessing fostering outcomes - indoor breeding
This video from BPEX explains how to foster piglets.
Supplementing water to lactating sows
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.
Management of the weakest piglets
This trick explains how to obtain foster sows for the adoptions.
Understanding the sow farm in terms of finisher profitability
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.
Avoiding the use of prods
Dr. Temple Grandin explains how to avoid the use of prods when handling pigs.
Video tour of a pork plant featuring Temple Grandin
A tour of a pork plant guided by Dr. Temple Grandin, Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University and widely considered to be the world's leading expert on humane animal handling at meat packing plants. This video provides an honest look at how pigs are handled at pork packing plants
Sow overmanagement consequences (2/2)
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.
Use of coloured clothes pegs for the daily management in the farrowing quarters
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.
Netherlands: significantly fewer pigs castrated over the past five years
Now nearly 75% of all boars in the Netherlands are not castrated.
Sow overmanagement consequences (1/2)
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.