articles about batch in Articles

Which management factors can affect the feed conversion ratio? Enric Marco covers how all-in all-out, density, trough space, and filling and emptying of barns can lose us money.

In the best case, farrowing within a batch usually happens over the course of three days, and in the worst case can last longer than a week, creating different lactation lengths...

We propose a 2.5-week batch management system with weaning on several consecutive days.

Not all progress is made through "smart farming." Here's a simple solution that can greatly improve biosecurity between batches of weaned piglets, preventing recirculation of disease.

This article discusses 4-week batch farrowing (4WBF), very common in small farms (250 sows) in some other countries, including France. Analysis will be based on a comparison with 3-week batch farrowing (3WBF).

Each batch of sows is identified with a different colour, so we will only have to look at the colour of the pegs

The dispersion of matings described in the previous article is even more drastic on farms operating in bands over one week.

Wouldn’t it be great if all the sows on a farm (weaned sows, gilts, repeat breeders…) could be mated on the same day?! And if we were able to choose, on Mondays?

This may be a good option when farrowings and litter control during the first days are the priority.

On small farms it is better to group tasks on specific days, leaving other days with less tasks in order to organize days off...

On large farms, it is common to wean more than once per week. This way, tasks can be homogenized throughout the week: each day will have a similar volume of work as the previous day.

A large part of the work on a swine farm can be divided into 3 key tasks: weaning, mating and farrowing. The day chosen for weaning determines the other two tasks; first, the matings, and then, as a consequence, the farrowings (the 2 ‘great events’ of which productivity of a farm depends on).

As we discovered in the last chapter, there are no “traditional” BM systems lasting over one week that allow for weaning at 28 days with a 5-week rotation time. However, breaking with the theoretical norms, we can wean at 28 days when working with batches every 5 weeks.

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...

During the last 10 years we have been trying to optimize the different Batch Management systems (BM), searching for the most effective system. We had come to the conclusion that each one of the different traditional BM options had their pros and cons, and neither is better or worse than the other. Electing the best system depends on the necessities and the calibration of space on each particular farm. However, we have recently “discovered” a new BM option that opens the door to new possibilities.

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