Episode 1: feeds, feeders, water and drinkers

The books are very wise but practice is often more important. That’s why it’s very useful to meet the experts who have seen a lot of mistakes and know their reasons, so they can give a valuable advice. Our magazine had an opportunity to get to know such an experienced expert — Dirk Hesse — during two-day seminar, organized by German Agrarian Centre. He didn’t grudge to share his knowledge and experience, which he’s got on the best German and Danish farms. The first piece of advice — in the article.

To understand how to rear pigs properly that they feel comfortable and the farm gets maximum profits, one should look at the world with their eyes. Their needs will be approximately as follows:

• never be hungry or thirsty;
• live without fights, pain and injuries;
• never know what’s stress and fear;
• have optimal climatic conditions;
• rest a lot.

Feeds and feeders

It was previously recommended that one shouldn’t overfeed gilts/sows before insemination if order to save all the embryos. Now we work with high-producing genetics, so «the rules of the game» has changed. Successful are the owners who managed to forget everything they were taught 30 years ago and chose a new way to work. First of all it concerns the recommendations for feeding gilts and sows.

Always remember that time around insemination is crucial. A sow should feel as good as possible to be sure it can farrow all potential piglets and nurse them. Will the feed restrictions help to achieve this aim? Not likely! Pigs have the condition they feel comfortable with. It’s ideal when we look at sow’s back and can’t see protruding chain and ribs. To achieve it we should rearrange the system of animal feeding: from pre-insemination period till weaning

How to count feeding places? The first factor is type of feeding. Imagine that one day you are given a dry cereal and the next morning — cereal with milk. Which will you eat faster? Of course, the second variant. The same is with pigs. If you practice dry feeding, pigs need twice more time compairing to wet feeds. So in the first case there are 1–2 pigs for one feeding place, in the second — 7–8 (the same is if the feed is dry, but there is also a nipple drinker so the animal can mix up feed with water).

An effective method to see whether you count feeding places right is to look at your pigs’ ears. If their back-ends are bitten, it means you haven’t got enough feeding places. So pigs try to chase their rivals away: they jump on their back and bite back-ends of their ears.

1. How does sows overfeeding influence embryos survival?

2. How should the sow be treated to get the highest number of embryos?

3. Where is the best place for feeders?

4. What is the relationship between the quantity of water drunk by sows and their piglets’ growth?

5. How to get rid of biofilms in pig’s drinking-bowls?

7. How to get rid of poor water circulation - "nursery" of harmful microbes?

8. Why should the pen have two drinking-bowls?

9. What kind should the trough and drinking-bowls be?

You can find answers for these and other questions read in the full version of the article in the magazine “Profitable Pig Production” № 2 (14), 2013.