Dr. Dirk Hesse, independent pork industry consultant, director of consulting company AGRIKontakt

If you were asked what a sow needs to give birth to a big number of piglets, I am sure you would at once start talking about providing optimal conditions of environment, balanced feeding, peculiarities of genetics and so on. Of course it’s true and very important. But among this “global” aspects we often forget about the main thing — the process of insemination itself. The rule № 1 is: an AI operator mustn’t be in a hurry, nervous or rude with the animal. Instead they should make not only tactile, but also voice contact, pay appropriate attention to stimulation, inseminate in the presence of a boar etc. These are well-known facts, but there are also some peculiarities you should know about:

Checking the heat and boar stimulation

Advice 1. When to start checking sows? It is common that piglets are weaned on Thursday, although the time of insemination can vary: on Monday morning, on Monday evening or even on Tuesday morning. As long as a ticket to successful insemination is efficient heat control, if we wean on Thursdays, we have to begin checking heat as early as on Sunday evening. Of course a boar won’t be odd!

Advice 2. Оne of FAQ is: a boar of what breed is better for stimulation? Indeed it doesn’t matter, although it is believed that Duroc smells best! You should pay your attention to the other thing: one boar is usually used on farms to stimulate sows, but it’s not very good. You would have much better results is there are 3–5 boars. What for? Because sows like women like the look and smell of one boar and can’t stand of another! It is proved, for example, that gilts and young sows react negatively to very big boars. It’s difficult for us to understand, but if look at this world with the pig’s eyes, everything will become logic!

As for the question about breeds of boars, it really matters when it comes to insemination. The main opposition is between Pietrain and Duroc: the first give high-quality meat and the second give more viable liveborn piglets. Besides, pigs that we get from “match” F1 gilt + Duroc perform much better during finishing period and has less percentage of mortality. Which boar to choose for insemination depends on the type of the farm. If you have the full-cycle-farm than from the economic point of view you’d better choose Duroc: viable piglets + better performance + less mortality outweight the minus of this breed — less percentage of lean meat. But if your farm works just with finishers, in your case Pietrain boars are better.

Advice 3. The right stimulation is not when the boar walks along the passage, but when it stops at the pen with a sow/group of sows that you are going to inseminate. Then you have several advantages: the sows that should be inseminated are happy as they can make nose-to-nose contact with the boar and it doesn’t stimulate other sows ahead of time. What technological solutions can help to achieve this aim?

If your farm is big and has more than 1000 sows, it is very expensive to build so that to build doors that fix a boar. When one of the big German enterprises (7 000 sows) faced this problem, it spent “coins” for creation and exploitation of a convenient trailer for teasing boars. 

The size of the trailer corresponds to the size of the pen of the sows that are going to be inseminated. Thanks to the mobile wheels it is easy to move along the passage and even to twist. This invention proves one more time that you do not need much money for efficient production, the key point is to come to the problem creatively! 

You can find answers for these and other questions in the full version of the interview in the magazine “Profitable Pig Production”, №3 (15) 2013.