Early insemination offers hope for more piglet production

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

A new technique being tried out in the Netherlands brings more litters per year through serving sows during the suckling period

by NORMAN DUNN

European Union law stipulates 28 days as the minimum suckling period. In theory, at any rate, this means the number of farrowings per sow every year is reduced when compared with performance when 21 days was a normal suckling period on European swine farms.

Could the advantages of earlier weaning be recovered (up to 2.4 litters per sow/year were possible then) if sows could be served while still suckling?

Dutch researchers at the University of Wageningen are looking into this possibility. They're applying a management technique called "intermittent suckling" (IS) to encourage early oestrus. In the Dutch trials, IS means litter members are separated from their sow for 10 hours per day, starting usually on day 19. Results so far show that, where the IS technique is applied, all sows come into heat between six and nine days later. Better still, insemination during suckling in trials is giving the same conception rates and subsequent litter sizes as conventionally served females.

At Wageningen, 160 sows were divided into four groups with IS beginning at day 19 and continuing for seven days in the first group. IS also began on day 19 for group two, but then continued for 14 days (giving a later weaning date). IS wasn't started until day 26 with sows in the third group and this was continued for seven days, also for an extended suckling period. The sows in the fourth group were conventionally managed, weaning at 28 days and oestrus beginning an average five days later.

The crucial period from farrowing to subsequent conception was impressively shortened in groups one and two, with 26 and 25 days respectively, compared to 33 days for the control group. The resultant farrowing rates were 90, 80 and 86 per cent and liveborn per litter 12.5, 13.1 and 13.3.

Which hog supplied the sausage? Look at the label!
A personal marketing message straight from the hog catches the eye with every jar of swine liver sausage (leberwurst) sold by organic swine producer Bernd Schulz from his Brandenburg farm near Berlin. On each label, Bernd features a photograph of the hog responsible for the contents of every jar.

This farmer runs a herd of 80 sows outside on his fields under organic production rules. Yearly production is around 1,600 hogs weaned at 40 days and fed for seven to eight months before slaughtering. The so called bio-pork from organically managed swine already has a good market in Germany. But Bernd and his marketing partner Dennis Buchmann, who runs an online organic food sales website at www.meinekleinefarm.org, decided to personalize sales a bit more and started photographing the feeding hogs as they come up to slaughter.

"People who want to eat pork products  have also to be prepared  to accept that the animal has to be slaughtered," points out Bernd, explaining  the photos.

Bernd started out as a manager on an East German co-operative farm with several thousand sows.  He decided to try and get back to basics after the reunification of Germany and go for a much more ecologically-aware type of pork production. On his own farm, he's kept numbers down to 80 breeding animals. Bernd's aim with the personalized labelling is to demonstrate to customers the link between the living animal and the high quality food in his processed pork products, which also include sülze (pork in sour aspic) and garlic flavoured ground pork.

The personal photo ploy on the one pound meat product jars hasn't put customers off. On the contrary, claims this farmer, "our sales went right up when we launched the photo labels." As a further sales boost, Bernd and Dennis hold regular pork roast barbecues on the farm through the summer and advertised on their website – naturally with photographs of his hogs.

Yogurt for breakfast gets Danish pigs off to a great start
Supermarkets in Danish Jutland have long been used to the sight of local pig farmers in boots and jeans passing through checkout once a week pushing trolleys piled high with yogurt pots. When this trend started about 10 years ago, it was first assumed that the local farming families had all started a healthier eating programme. "In fact, the yogurt was for feeding very young piglets," explains feed expert Richard Brinch Hansen from the Odder-based firm NutriScan.

"We were then at the stage when our Danish hybrid sows were producing up to 30 weaners per year. Even when the sows had a lot of milk for such litters, it was still a day or two before the milk flow peaked and all the litter members settled down. It was first of all to cover these few days between colostrum and peak milk yield that farmers started experimenting with shop-bought yogurt."

Hansen says just a few spoonfuls daily for the young piglets provide a tremendous kick-start to the development of the young animals, setting them up to take full advantage of mother's milk when it comes into full flow. Other specialists point out that yogurt fed at other times – at weaning, for example – helps keep liquid intake rates high in pigs changing over to dry feed.   

Naturally, the yogurt fans soon found out that cheaper and more practical buckets of yogurt offering 10 kilograms at a time were available from wholesalers.

Now, with some farmers running over 1,000 sows and using between 50 and 100 litres of yogurt a week, there is demand for even bigger supplies. So now a number of specialist feed firms offer powdered yogurt mixes for young pigs. These contain milk powder, electrolytes to help optimize the body fluid balance and a high content of lactose as a readily available and effective energy source. Also in the mix are lactic acid bacteria such as Enterococcus faecium, the inoculant lowering pH of the feed to inhibit growth of pathogens in the piglet gut.

Ready-to-mix yogurt powder is also much handier than the old system. It comes in eight to 10 kilogram buckets which can make 70 kilograms of nutritious yogurt. In Denmark, it is also much cheaper than the product mainly designed for human consumption – about 25 per cent less, in fact.

"As far as I know there have been no performance trials in this country linked to the possible effects of feeding yogurt for piglets," admits Hansen. "But I know from the many farmers using this feed that it is greatly appreciated by the piglets. Reported results include a marked drop in piglet diarrhea and associated mortality. But perhaps the best proof of its success is the fact that Danish pig producers on Jutland have been using yogurt feeding for very young piglets for around a decade now."

Spain again tops Europe for hog prices  
How have hog prices levelled out in the last year? Are farmers in the neighbouring country getting more, or less, this time? These questions are answered every year in Europe around the first week of April when the leading processors and producer organizations publish their payments for the previous year. Organizations such as the 12,000-member German Swine Industry Association (ISN) then ensure their members get the appropriate breakdowns and comparisons by electronic mail.

Last year proved a great year once again for Spanish hog producers, who managed to beat the overall average amongst the leading players (C$1.95 per kilogram) by 17 cents /kg slaughter weight (SW) with $2.12/kg. In 2010, the Spaniards were still first in Europe, but with just $1.94/kg SW. French feeders took second place in the price table last year with an average $1.98, 22 cents /kg up on the previous year.

Danish hog producers are mainly co-operative members and their respective slaughterhouses (dominated by Danish Crown) were generous with bonuses last year. This brought their average payment for slaughter hogs up to $1.95 /kg, 21 cents more than on the previous year. German feeders, on the other hand, had to contend with a collapse in pork prices early in 2011 as news broke about dioxin found in livestock feed. This brought the country's feeder income down to $1.91 /kg. Poland and the Netherlands also saw their prices dragged down by the German dioxin scandal and this took their average slaughter earnings to $1.89 and $1.85 respectively.

These top six slaughter hog production countries in Europe now produce around two-thirds of the EU-27 annual output of around 253 million hogs. Top-of-the-league Spain has already published its own production figures for 2011: 42.066 million hogs, an increase of 2.9 per cent on the year.

A natural probiotic yeast for prolonged piglet health
The really exciting developments in swine veterinary medicine nearly always feature organisms that don't have just one curative role but offer instead a whole battery of advantages.

This is certainly the case with the probiotic yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae boulardii, whose performance possibilities were highlighted by researchers for the French Lallemand Animal Nutrition company at the annual Journées Recherche Porcine conference in Paris this February.

Let's call the potent probiotic plain S. boulardii. This is how the Lallemand team simplified the complicated name at the Paris conference, while pointing out that it was already recognized as extremely effective in controlling diarrhea in humans. But, tried out in farrowing and suckling sows, the yeast has offered much more, enhancing health through regulating the digestive flora populations in the gut.

The Paris conference also heard that S. boulardii action is not affected by antibiotics. The yeast seems to prevent intestinal infections and also dampen down the action of gut pathogens such as E. coli, C. Difficile and salmonella by binding these organisms. Lallemand trials indicate that its presence in sow milk through supplementary feeding appears to prevent diarrhea in very young piglets, protecting gut mucosa and encouraging gut wall development.

When fed in this way as a dietary supplement to pre-farrowing and suckling sows the conference heard that S. boulardii appears to stimulate production of immunoglobulin in the sow colostrum and this, in turn, boosts piglet health.

On a commercial farm, the Lallemand team selected 61 sows, dividing them into control and trial groups three weeks before farrowing. With the control sows on conventional feed, the trial sows were fed 25 grams per day of 10 per cent S. boulardii concentrate right through to weaning. 

Colostrum from the different groups was sampled at farrowing and then 12 and 24 hours later.  Milk was also sampled on day 19 of lactation. The sows on the diet supplemented with S. boulardii had 21 per cent more of the important immunoglobulin G (IgG) in their colostrum on average.

The effect of this boost on piglet health and survival could be significant, according to the research team. Early immunity to the effects of pathogens, including those causing diarrhea, depends on immunoglobulin, the most important one in this respect being IgG. It's also been shown that piglet protection through IgG at the very early stages of life boosts later active immunity and thus the level of disease protection at weaning. BP