Page 5 of articles about farrowing room

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?

Lifting partitions in the farrowing unit allows piglets from different litters to mix, sharing teats and socializing.

Achieving good levels of colostral immunity by vaccinating sows is the first step to prevent scours; subsequently, active pre or post-weaning immunization must be added to prevent post-weaning diarrhoea.

Diarrhoea is their most typical clinical manifestation, and the earlier the onset, the more harmful it is. Newborn piglets can present with another clinical picture, with signs of sepsis (shock, depression, death, polyarthritis), which is associated with an extraintestinal E. coli.

An easy solution to store these feeders is to hang them in the corridor of their room. In this way, they do not stand in the way and they can dry well before being used again.

Management factors and environmental conditions are often triggers or predisposing agents, not only to the clinical presentation of the disease, but also its severity and course.

The article provides an alternative to the current vaccination programs that could be the solution for farms with early onset oedema disease. However, this alternative —consisting of vaccinating the dams at the end of gestation to achieve post-weaning piglets immunization—, also raises questions...

Use the probe of an intrauterine AI catheter to provide colostrum.

Use a rake to pick placentas more easily.

Neonatal mortality does not only depend on the design of the farrowing crate, but also on genetic and management factors, as well as litter size, especially with the increased use of hyper-prolific dam lines.

Although dispersion in the farrowing quarters is decisive in the final dispersion, we can take steps to correct some of this dispersion in the nursery.

Finding alternatives to reduce the number of nurse sows by maximising the number of suckling piglets per sow.