Page 16 of articles about sow in Articles

As mentioned in the first chapter of planning weaning, after deciding which sows are going to be weaned, on weaning day we must take into account several factors...

In swine, dystocia is usually caused by oversized piglets (or by a narrow birth canal) instead of foetal positioning problems.

A correct supervision is one of the key points of a farrowing.

Deciding which sows are going to be weaned on weaning day is an important task that should be examined well.

Adjustment of replacement on farms working on 3-week batch system.

In the last chapter we examined the advantages of positioning crates facing inwards and outwards. Now we are going to explore two other options: Aisles both in front and behind the crates and crates on both sides of the aisle.

When designing farrowing rooms, sows can be placed in different ways: facing inwards, facing outwards, with aisles both in front and behind the crate, or on both sides of the aisle.

Next we will consider some aspects that can be taken into account in order to adjust the day to induce farrowing.

On many farms the introduction of gilts is not homogenous. However, the introduction of a similar number of gilts to each productive batch would be ideal. How can we do this?

The gestation period in the majority of sows is usually around 113 to 115 days. However, a percentage of sows can farrow normally up to 3 days before or after.

In the previous chapter we began to describe several systems for recording clearly and quickly the dates that gilts come into heat and for planning gilt service.

In previous chapters we have looked at the importance of maintaining the ideal parity profile within each batch.

In the last chapter we looked at the importance of achieving homogenous farrowing batches (age distribution + nº sows). In this chapter we will begin to see how to achieve this.

We have already seen that in order to achieve a correct parity structure and homogeneity of the production batches, it is necessary to control the number of replacement gilts entering the herd.

Until now we have spoken about the general parity structure of the herd, but in an ideal situation this optimum distribution should be put into practice in each of the productive batches of sows.

One of the main goals for a sow herd is to achieve a correct homogeneity of the productive batches.