Page 8 of articles about sow in Articles

This time, Joan Wennberg discusses the different feeding and environmental control systems in the farrowing house with Heraclio Corchón and Javier Lorente

Sometimes, when working on the farm, we have to get up close to the sow to check its card in order to know its productive cycle. Or, whilst carrying piglets to be fostered, we ask ourselves, will that sow be a second parity one?

Traditional culling policies have a threshold number of farrowings after which sows are culled —after weaning. But, what would happen if this policy were to be modified to actually consider the performance of each sow?

In the previous paper, the effects of nutrient restriction and consequent catabolism during lactation on sow reproduction yield have been addressed. In the present paper, the efficiency of sows in using energy from feed and body mass is considered.

A study was performed including 69 PRRS-positive sow herds with the aim of comparing the use of PRRSV MLV and quarantine facilities with the PRRSV status of replacement gilts at first insemination.

The study described here was designed to determine if the body tissue mobilization during lactation imposed by feed restriction could affect litter size and sow performance in the subsequent lactation.

Boar exposure time, duration and frequency, proper boar: gilt or sow ratio, exposure methods, hormones, …

Minimizing sow losses in the initial cycles has three positive effects for the economic efficiency of the farm

A simple, economical and practical trick is to identify the replacement gilts with tags of different colours according to the batch they belong to.

Sows with more than 16 piglets Total Born (TB) per litter have twice as many stillbirths (SB) as those with 13 to 16 TB litters, and three times more SB than sows farrowing litters smaller than 13 TB.

It is easy to see the reaction of the sows (of all of them!) when we supply them with paper. A handful in front of their snout or at the reach of their mouth is enough... oxytocin! It is like giving an injection!

The farm reports a problem of low prolificacy (mean annual live births of 11.91) and low fertility in summer, with a marked increase in acyclic returns.

We recommend that producers pay more attention to gilts and sows that are at risk of increasing NPD. Situations of increased risk are described.

This second part deals with the problems caused by not  recording properly the cause of abortions, sows and piglets deaths, nurse sows and hormonal treatments.

This first part deals with backward and impossible data, i.e. the sows that are no longer in the farm but still appear both in the management softwatre and the 100% delivery rates in gilts.

Exposure during acclimatization can be considered the first dose of a vaccine, and pre-farrowing exposure its booster.