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Adequate water and feed intake are important for sow health, performance and reproduction. For this reason, the aim of the present research was to analyze the relation between the traits feed (FI), water intake (WI), water-to-feed ratio (WFR) and weight of sow (WS) during pregnancy. The second objective was to establish whether the relationships remained constant during the course of pregnancy. The sow herd had a size of 90 sows (Large White, German Landrace and their crossbreeds). In total about 8,500 observations were available. The average FI, WI, WFR and WS were 2.9 kg/d, 16.7 l/d, 5.8 l/kg/d and 219.1 kg, respectively.
Parity class had a significant influence on WI and FI (P < 0.05). Nulliparous sows had a constant WI until day 80 of pregnancy. Thereafter WI increased until the end of pregnancy. WI of primiparous sows increased at the beginning and end of pregnancy. The FI curves started without variation between sows at the beginning of the observation period. An increase was observed at the end of pregnancy. FI was highly affected by feeding management demonstrated by the correlation between FI and WS estimated with random regression. WS increased during pregnancy. Nulliparous sows had the highest weight gain and multiparous sows the lowest (39.0 kg and 23.8 kg respectively). Repeatabilities with the fixed regression model varied between 0.56 (FI) and 0.68 (WS). Using random regression the repeatability of FI increased continuously over the course of pregnancy from 0.35 to 0.75 indicating that the variance between sows at the beginning was lower than at the end of pregnancy. The repeatabilities of WI enhanced from 0.57 to 0.75. The variation of WI could provide some useful information in terms of detection of abnormalities (e.g. fever and lameness) in the sows. The correlations between FI and WI were constant until day 60 of pregnancy, except for multiparous sows — they compensated their hunger with a high WI. The relationship decreased at the end of pregnancy due to feed adaptation. A negative relationship was found between FI and WS but the value increased over the course of pregnancy.
S Kruse, E Stamer, I Traulsen and J Krieter, 2011. Livestock Science, 137: 37-41.
