Page 2 of articles about prolificacy in Articles

20 years ago we inseminated gilts when too small, then we inseminated them when too heavy, and now we are returning to an intermediate weight.

The trick consists in selecting the appropriate foster sows and marking them on the back with the maximum number of pigs that they can take care of.

It' is not as simple as the larger pigs have better survivability...

Achieving a high prolificacy and knowing how to take advantage of it (transform it into weaned piglets) is vital for the productivity of a sow farm.

We should be cautious when setting the number of sperm per insemination dose, so the urge to reduce it does not make us use a number that is under the fertility threshold. Something that may be productive and/or profitable for a certain farm may not be so for another farm.

The procedure is simple, quick and well tolerated by the recipient sows.

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".

The author considers which is the ideal day for the mating and sets out the improvements in the results obtained when weaning on Monday.

A simple method to facilitate the daily calculation of the nurse sows needed for the correct running of the farrowing quarters in a hyperprolific sows system.

The ingestion of Ig in sufficient quantity is the first priority. So much so that it even comes before the factor that seems most important: the feed supply.

The optimal fertilization of a sow depends on several factors, among them, mating in a specific moment of the oestrus.

The pig’s reproductive cycle lasts for 20 weeks, with weaning at 21 days: 16,5 gestation period + 3 lactating + average time on heat. Supposing that the sows wean 10 piglets, we can then come to the following conclusion: it takes two weeks to produce a piglet.

One of the main goals for a sow herd is to achieve a correct homogeneity of the productive batches.

The Danish pig producers’ research organisation has tested a number of different designs. They recommend pen dimensions of 2.7x1.8 m to accommodate modern prolific breeds.

Normally the productivity of the sow is valued for the number of litters/sow/year multiplied by the number of weaned piglets per litter.

Boars in an Artificial Insemination Centre are breeding a great number of sows. Using conventional insemination techniques, one single boar can be breeding from 350 to 800 times per year.