Fit for farrowing?

Care of the sow before and during farrowing is vital for a healthy litter, as is after care of the piglets, as Liz Shankland explains in the first of two articles for newcomers to breeding

- Liz Shankland

Increasing the chances of a sow producing good, strong piglets is the aim of every good breeder, but the hard work starts long before the birth.

Forward planning is key and you should, of course, have started well by selecting the best breeding stock. However, it’s equally important to pay attention to detail when preparing the sow or gilt for breeding, when caring for her through pregnancy, and both during and after farrowing.

Richard Hooper has decades of experience of rearing pigs in indoor and outdoor systems and is livestock manager at Harper Adams University in Shropshire, where he oversees the institution’s 230-sow intensive breeding unit. The award-winning centre is a standalone, profitable enterprise within the university, breeding and rearing pigs to pork weight, with each sow producing an average of 32 pigs for sale every year. Although those breeding sows spend their entire lives indoors and are farrowed in crates, the basic principles followed at the unit are applicable to any kind of system.

“Preparation starts at breeding,” Richard insists. “You need to be thinking things like, when is the right time to serve that gilt? Is she old enough? Is she mature enough? Is she big enough? Is she too fat?

“Sow and gilt condition is pretty key. If you have a sow that’s too fat, all the data suggests that she will be at a higher risk of having problems. She is likely to have bigger pigs and have more problems pushing those pigs out.