Page 18 of articles about management in Articles

Oral fluid samples can at times replace traditional blood testing while requiring less labor and technical skill. Also there is clearly reduced stress for people and pigs, which is becoming important in modern food animal production.

In this chapter we will discuss the benefits of heating mats

The majority of newborn mamals are very sensitive to low temperatures. However, piglets are especially predisposed to loss of energy.

One could think that the number of deaths increases in the winter in the northern hemisphere because the animals freeze to death.

The milk production of sows is one of the parameters that has evolved the most over the last several decades.

In this chapter we will take a look at some other aspects of farrowing induction...

In practice there aren’t any direct methods to measure lean reserves in the field. On an experimental level, generally, ultrasound machines are used to measure the loin thickness (LT) as an indicator of lean reserves (just as the dorsal fat measure, DFM, is taken as an indicator of fat reserves)

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...

It is practically impossible to inspect all the pigs individually during routine control visits.

The productive and behavioral results found in this study suggest that GRH immunization is an alternative to surgical castration.

In the last decades the degree of technification and evolution of the productive systems at all levels has been constant.

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).

In the last chapter we examined mating guidelines that came rather close to being ideal, given that they achieve the following objectives: At least one mating should be adjusted to meet the ideal time and achieve the first objective with the least number of matings.

Without adding more space, the only way to accommodate an increase in weaning age is to decrease the breeding herd inventory.