Page 12 of articles about sow in Articles

Lameness is the second most common cause for the culling of sows.

One of the most frequent recommendations for improving the feed consumption in sows during lactation is using pelleted feed instead of meal. Nevertheless, this recommendation is not very well supported by experimental evidences.

We achieved it combining the use of two ear tags per sow together with their strategic location in order to avoid losses due to biting.

The goal is to protect the nipples of the future breeding sows during their first days of life.

Farrowing is a painful and stressful process, especially in the case of gilts and dystocic farrowings.

The registration of the sow losses/cullings in the management computer programs is normally something easy, but it is not always given the importance that it really has so, sometimes, the registration is incomplete, with wrong dates and without writing down the cause of the loss/culling. Nevertheless, its correct registration and its later analysis can give us very useful information for the correct technical-financial management of the farm.

The sow must be able to store enough calcium during the pregnancy to face the possible mobilizations during the lactation.

The goal is to increase the agility of the reading process of the body condition of the sows using the Renco device.

The goal is to make the management during the gestation easier using a different colour spray colour each week to mark the tasks carried out with the sows.

The litter size of the recent and the last farrowing batches was significantly reduced, and the suckling pigs showed an obvious varying weight, condition and viability.

As of the 3rd-4th day of lactation it is not recommendable anymore to replace small piglets and piglets with poor a growth rate for good piglets, because it is probable that the teat that has to be used has already dried off due to the scarce stimulation received for several consecutive days.

In many occasions, the location of the heat lamp very near to the head of the sow can bother her.

In previous articles we have talked about the importance of a good sow replacement, and we have explained methods to calculate an adequate sow replacement rate. In this article we are going to show an example of a bad replacement policy and its consequences throughout time on the productivity of the farm.

When there are not enough teats, the strongest piglet always occupies the place of the weak one, that is left without milk to suckle.

Normally, when we ask a farmer which is their average number of weaned piglets per sow they normally know this parameter, because its calculation is easy, nevertheless...

The aim of this trick is the improvement of the quality of the environment in the farrowing quarters for the sows as well as for the piglets, saving on energy consumption by means of the manufacturing of nests.