Articles - Management

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.

How to administer drugs in order to optimize the speed of action, the efficiency and the financial cost.

This article suggests some solutions to the main problems encountered in pregnancies with group housing.

This trick consists in offering cheap manipulable materials that satisfy the pigs' needs.

A simple piece of cigarette paper will help us to evaluate, in an unbiased way, if the surfaces are completely dry after their cleaning and disinfection.

The two main factors that make that certain farms have not been successful adapting to the animal welfare regulations are design and handling/management.

Which factors affect the WTSI? Among the factors with a biggest influence we have: inadequate intake during lactation, season of the year, and length of the lactation.

The goal of this trick is to create a register of the coming into heat of the gilts that can be interpreted quickly and easily, and to control the day of the beginning of the treatment with altrenogest when we wish to delay their mating/service.

We allowed the shared lactation between different litters by raising the fences located between the farrowing pens a week before the weaning due date.

Micro-sprinklers were installed above the windows in order to reduce the temperature in the farrowing rooms in summer.

In order to keep the population of the different kinds of animals constant, the flows of pigs must be constant. This is, we must keep the production pace of the farm.

The goal is to identify the number of returns to oestrus of the sows quickly and at a glance using coloured pegs.

The piglets born to primiparous sows show a worse performance during the nursery stage and a twofold risk of dying than the piglets born to multiparous sows.

Use of sows' ear tags for identifying each of the liquid feed valves with their corresponding number.

In the previous piece of advice we saw that obtaining foster sows by moving piglets "forward" had some disadvantages, which are solved by moving the sows "backwards".

A very simple system for monitoring the heats of replacement gilts that consists of putting them ear tags at each of the two heats during the quarantine period.

The goal is to inseminate quickly the sows after the first stimulus by the boar, but keeping the stimulation.

The improvement in prolificacy seems to be linked, in many cases, to a lower uniformity of the weights at birth.

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 have readily visible, quick, and handy information of the farm.

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.

It's necessary to promote a standardization of the causes of the losses/cullings of the sows. Some rules on which this standardization can be based on are proposed.

This protocol is a very useful diagnostic tool so we can have a comprehensive view of a farm on a certain moment.