Birth Weight Effects on Postnatal Growth
In the existing commercial sow populations, variation in postnatal growth performance of their offspring may be already preprogrammed before birth. Because...
Assessing Sow Removal
Support system offers objective tool to help make culling decisions. Removing sows from the breeding herd for reproductive problems becomes a relatively...
Stalls Versus Pens
The University of Minnesota's swine research facility at Waseca, MN, compares sows housed in individual stalls vs. pens, but the jury is still out. The...
Parity's Impact On Productivity
Parity structure of the breeding herd can have a significant effect on efficiency and profitability. The objective of this first in the 2008 quarterly...
Lactating Sows Feed Themselves
New feeder design improves sow body condition and helps boost pigs-born-alive average. About three years ago, Iowa Select Farms set out to do a better...
Free Stall Eases Feeding, AI Chores
New hoop barn helps achieve consistent sow body condition and fits with organic production standards. Three years ago, Organic Prairie pork producer Tom...
Don't Mix Sows 10-14 Days after Breeding
As pork producers take up the challenge to house gestating sows in groups vs. individual stalls...
Test Tube Pigs are Now a Reality
The ability to produce pig embryos in vitro (in the laboratory environment) has been mastered at Mississippi State University...
Management Tools Help Improve Reproductive Efficiencies
This study provides “proof-of-principle” that use of a purpose-built boar exposure area (BEAR) to induce a natural first heat in “select” gilts, and the use of low-dose exogenous gonadotropins to induce first heat in non-cyclic “opportunity” gilts,...
‘Skip-a-Heat’ Plan Helps Avoid Second-Parity Slump
Breeding Parity 1 sows at their second postweaning estrus has been shown to increase the number of live embryos detected at Day 30 of gestation. This increase in embryo viability may negate the effects of the second-parity dip in reproductive performance...
