More in Sow Productivity

“The typical call I get from a producer is, ‘I can’t get my pigs off to a good start, Doc,’” remarks Minnesota swine veterinarian Tim Loula of the Swine Vet Center (SVC), St. Peter, MN....More

As we work with farms to improve pigs weaned/mated female/year (PW/MF/Y), we continue to look at the interaction of key performance indicators. For this article, we will focus on wean-to-first service interval, which is the time it takes a weaned female to return to heat and be bred....More

To compare the value of feeding natural vs. synthetic vitamin E, Kansas State University (KSU) researchers used 126 PIC gilts and sows and their litters to determine the effect of vitamin E level and source on sow plasma, milk and piglet tissue concentrations of α-tocopherol (a naturally occurring compound found in a variety of foods that provides concentrations of vitamin E)....More

An international consortium made up of more than 50 university, industry and government laboratories in the United States, Europe and Asia worked for more than 10 years to produce a detailed annotation of the pig genome....More

Why is it that whenever you mix unfamiliar sows or pigs in a group a fierce battle ensues? It’s in their genes. Pigs are hard-wired to establish a hierarchy when placed in the near proximity of others. That’s the conclusion USDA livestock behavioral specialist Jeremy Marchant-Forde offered at a sow housing workshop during the Leman Swine Conference recently. But he adds a caveat: Given a choice, they might just avoid the altercation altogether. At least, that’s what their ancestors would do....More

Have you ever taken a look at seasonal effects on key performance indicators such as percent repeat services, farrowing rate, farrow-to-farrow interval, litters farrowed/mated female/year or litter farrowed/crate/year?...More

National headlines are proclaiming a bacon shortage and grocery stores and bacon-burger restaurants may already be raising prices, according to a post Wednesday by Illinois blogger Stu Ellis. In short, the headlines may push consumers away from even checking prices in the meat case, assuming that bacon is too expensive to afford for a family trying to survive the recession.  But what is the real situation with regard to the availability of pork products?...More

In the last few months, we have fielded numerous calls and reviewed a lot of farm data to take a hard look at why there is so much variation in farrowing rate between farms and weeks of the year....More

University of California researchers probed multiple studies of nutrient requirements in sows during lactation to learn how factors such as litter size and piglet weight gain affect milk production in sows. Researchers were investigating better ways to model milk yield. Current models only predict average milk yield, but milk yield changes during lactation. Plus, a sow’s nutrient requirements also vary during lactation, meaning it is important to have reliable milk yield predictions....More

I recently attended a conference where there was considerable discussion about the variation between farms and production companies in cost of production. A common thought among attendees was that the variation in cost of production has been reduced as current technologies, such as genetics and housing, have been widely adopted and the industry consolidated...More

Preweaning mortality is influenced by several factors affecting the sow and her litter. These factors include disease, environment, neonatal pig care, equipment design and nutrition. If we assume the sows are healthy and located in a comfortable environment at farrowing, then the piglet becomes the likely focus to reduce death losses....More

In this article, we will focus on how wean-to-1st-service interval affects farrowing rate and total pigs born by artificial insemination (AI) technician...More