'Yogurt' for piglets saves lives and keeps sows stronger

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Offering a thicker consistency replacer in the farrowing pen leads to more milk intake by piglets. With larger litters, this is also proving to give suckling sows a break 

by NORMAN DUNN

Good growth with suckling litters and healthy weaner weights are important targets. But what about the sow? Fast-growing piglets in today's large litters demand a lot of milk. And no matter how much feed the sow manages, much of the litter weight gain usually comes right off her back.

A thin sow takes a good while to recover and the result can be an unwanted gap before she can become pregnant. Fostering is one solution. But what about offering additional milk substitute in the farrowing pen? European results suggest this approach is only partially successful. While it's true that the young pigs get more milk this way, a recent trial indicates that the low dry matter content of commercially available milk replacer is not high enough. Result: the piglets drink the milk, but still have a high demand for sow milk.

The feed firm Sloten took a tip from recent Dutch research and decided to develop a much thicker consistency of piglet milk to get around this problem. Powder to water ratio is 400 grams to the litre compared with the usual substitute mix of around 125. One result is a higher energy value for the thick version. This has more the consistency of yogurt and has an energy content of 19.4 MJ/kg, nearly five per cent more than the conventional replacement milk for piglets.

Tested with 92 litters at the German Haus Düsse research station (49 with litters on the "yogurt" from day two and the remaining litters on a standard replacement formula), the effect on sow weight loss was dramatic. With weaning at an average 27 days for both groups, the sows with their litters on "normal" milk replacer lost a mean 16.3 per cent of bodyweight, or 41.4 kilograms, during suckling. Where litters had the much higher dry matter and energy-richer "yogurt" to sup between suckling, sows lost only 31.1 kilograms on average, representing 12.1 per cent bodyweight loss.

At the same time, piglets on the new yogurt formula drank much more of their replacer.

This was fed through to day 21 with an immediate change to pre-starter. Based on weaning at 27 days, the piglets on yogurt consumed an average 6.3 kilograms of powder and 3.3 kilograms of pre-starter pellets. The control piglets managed only two kilograms of replacer powder each. They were on replacer for two weeks only before being offered pre-starter pellets, of which they ate an average 2.8 kilograms to weaning.

Survival was slightly worse for the pens where conventional replacer was on offer (6.6 per cent mortality against 5.3 per cent). And a higher proportion of the deaths in the conventional replacer pens was caused by crushing, according to the Haus Düsse results.

As nearly always, though, the heavier pigs at weaning then had a rocket start into the growing phase with an average 16 grams daily liveweight gain more than the piglets on conventional replacer. In fact, Sloten results indicate a 1.58 kilogram per head advantage at 65 days.

But is there any extra margin left after all this extra feed? Sloten researchers say there is. The piglets fed the supplementary yogurt during suckling cost the equivalent of around C$1.60 in extra feed in fall 2010, but still left an extra profit per hog at 65 days of $2.80.

Just as important, however, is the advantage in average sow condition. Although this has not been followed-up so far, it's reckoned that there will be real advantages in subsequent sow health and fertility through the supplementary feeding of litter members with "yogurt."
 

Infrared panels halve creep heating costs
Healthier piglets, and creep heating costs reduced by half, is the proud claim made by a north German inventor for his infrared floor panels. Studying technologies being tested for space laboratories interested Peter Filip in the ultra-efficient and lightweight infrared (IR) solution. This heats body tissue through radiation while not wasting energy in heating the surrounding air. His prototype plates for the floors of piglet creeps use a core of carbon fibre within mineral sandwiching sheets and a polyethylene mantle. The carbon fibre saves energy by converting over 90 per cent of electricity into radiation heat.

In independent tests with IR creep temperatures reduced in regular steps from 38 C in the first week after farrowing to 27 C in the fourth week, the electricity required for a 48 x 122 centimetre plate averaged 55 Watt/hour during the first three weeks and only 35 W/h over four weeks.

This offers electricity savings of 50 per cent when compared with IR lamps suspended in creep areas and used to create the same temperatures, according to Filip, who won a gold medal for his IR panel development at a 2010 inventor exhibition 2010 in Geneva. Thermostat regulated heating range with the panels is from 15 to 45 C.

Using IR lamps, costs over 28 days in heating a single creep averaged around 70 W/h Floor plates with circulated hot water (heated by electric immersion) providing the same creep temperature regime needed an average 90 W/h, while gas-heated water systems had a demand of 150 W/h in the German trials.

But there's more to IR creep heating panels than just cheaper running costs, according to Filip. "The radiation heat, which is completely harmless, seems to have a comforting effect on the young pigs. The tests that have been conducted for us indicate that piglets seem to be attracted back into the creep when not feeding. Usually the whole litter crowds in between feeds, at least during the first weeks."

He concludes: "A survey of 40 commercial piglet producers trying IR panels in Germany indicates that they seem to increase piglet health status with lower piglet mortality on average."

Getting a better fix on hog farm odours 
Overcrowded Europe leaves hog producers battling to justify their production against ever-increasing complaints by non-farming householders in the countryside. Smell is definitely the biggest problem.

Up until now, there's been no uniform testing system to indicate what smells in the hog barn exhaust air are most likely to get the neighbours reaching for the complaints line. Another problem is determining the time of day when the worst odour components peak. Researchers have said for years now that a more detailed analysis of hog barn smells could lead to better balancing of rations for least offensive components. And dependable timetables of peak emissions (such as feeding times) might help farmers cut costs by allowing them to use expensive exhaust air cleaners only during the hours they are needed most.

The trouble is that there are a very large number of odour-producing components in exhaust air, ranging from phenols and indoles to ketones, amines and volatile sulphur compounds. The standard odour test still involves sucking exhaust air into plastic bags and rushing it off to the lab for a gas chromatography test. But this method is never uniform and some of the most powerful odour components are so volatile that they dissolve or become otherwise unavailable for testing. There's also the problem that such bag samples represent a single snapshot of the situation for a few seconds.

The Danish hog industry is the one under some of the heaviest pressure to clean up its share of countryside air, so it is no surprise that the country's University of Aarhus has developed a continuous emission air testing system that measures the presence and amount of up to 17 different components on-site. A team from the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at Aarhus can now visit farms and set up what the scientists call an online proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry system (PTR-MS). This runs for several days on individual sites, identifies smell components down to parts per billion and gives clear identification of peak emission times during the day.

The signs so far are that PTR-MS is going to become a valuable tool in identifying new ways to reduce odour emissions from farming.

Where feeding hogs can cover over a kilometre per day
Bigger pens for feeding hogs must mean the animals do a lot more walking every day between feeding troughs and drinking bowls or nipples. This is perhaps not so marked in central Europe, where traditional pens for 20, 40 or 60 head are still the norm. But move over to eastern Europe or up to Denmark and pens in new units holding 400 hogs each are no rarity.

Now, strategists at the Oberer Hardthof Research Station belonging to the University of Giessen in Germany are questioning whether more trotting around is good for the hogs. There are already signs that feet and leg problems may be increasing in the "megapens." And what about feed conversion efficiency? Surely, more movement means less energy going towards liveweight gain? Finally, as a hog gets heavier isn't there the chance that it will start to begrudge any extra movement and therefore eat less, with weight gain then sliding back from the optimum?

 To get a handle on how far a hog travels every day, researchers at Giessen are applying video monitoring to hogs housed in different-size pens. New software has come to the rescue for the simplification of hog movement measurement: VideoMotion-Tracker from Mangold International. Giessen has started small by comparing 4.5 square metre pens with six feeders up to 105 kilograms liveweight and nine square metre pens with 12 feeders. Even on this scale, two points are very clear right from the beginning. The bigger the pen, the greater the distance covered by the average hog. Secondly, the heavier a hog gets, the less it moves around.

For instance, the mean distance walked by hogs starting the feeding cycle is 618 metres per day. In the middle of the feeding period, the average distance drops to 400 metres and, by the end, the daily trot between sleep, feed and water drops to 271 metres on average. In each case, the hogs in bigger pens are walking an extra 100 metres on average, but following the same trend of drastic reduction in movement as liveweight increases. One unsettling factor in the whole trial is the significant differences in individual movement. At the beginning of the feeding period, there are individual pigs covering more than 1,000 metres per day!

The Giessen experiment doesn't tell us much more so far, however. Still to be calculated is any loss in feed conversion efficiency linked to extra movement. Also, how much further will hogs in more modern 200-400 hog pens move around? Staff members at the pig research centre say they are looking at this now. BP