Abstract
Sow performance is a key component of the productivity of commercial pig farms. Reproductive failure in the sow is common in pig production. For every 100 sows served, 89 should farrow. In absence of specific diseases such as porcine parvovirus, pseudo-rabies, swine fever, leptospirosis and brucellosis, management failures are the most important causes of loss. A syndrome associated with reproductive inefficiency, and post-service vaginal discharge and high sow mortality in a commercial pig farm is described. Pregnancy failures exceeded 20% and sow mortality exceeded 12% for two consecutive years. The abnormal post-service vaginal discharge rate was 1.7% during the period of investigation.An investigation involving an analysis of farm records, a review of breeding management practices, clinical examinations, laboratory analysis and examination of urogenital organs was conducted.The main contributing factors found were a sub-optimal gilt breeding management, an inadequate culling policy in combination with a sub-optimal culling rate and the presence of cystitis in more than 1% of the urogenital organs examined. The high sow mortality rate was related to an aged breeding herd.A control programme was recommended based on management changes involving oestrus detection, movement of gilts post-service, hygiene in the service area, boar exposure post-service and urinary acidification. This programme failed to increase the farrowing rate due to incomplete implementation of the recommendations made. The farrowing rate increased to 86.5% subsequent to a farm manager change in January 2005, which resulted in complete implementation of the control programme.
Highlights
The farrowing rate, described as the percentage of females served that farrowed related to first mating, decreased from an average of 86% in 2001 to 77% during the years 2002 and 2003 on a 620-sow farrow-to-finish unit. Alexander and Muirhead (1997) suggested a target farrowing rate of 89%
The analysis of reproductive failures indicated that the reproductive losses during pregnancy were mainly due to high returns to oestrus and a high rate of non-pregnancy in sows
Reproductive performance The farrowing rate fell from 86% in 2001 to 77% in 20022003
Summary
The farrowing rate, described as the percentage of females served that farrowed related to first mating, decreased from an average of 86% in 2001 to 77% during the years 2002 and 2003 on a 620-sow farrow-to-finish unit. Alexander and Muirhead (1997) suggested a target farrowing rate of 89%. A service pool (120-150 kg), offering a lactating sow diet ad libitum. It accommodated 49 gilts in seven pens. Gilts were artificially inseminated in a service pen in the presence of a boar and transferred three to five days after second service to sow stalls in the dry sow house until day 110 of pregnancy. They were offered dry sow ration following the same feeding regime as pregnant sows (Table 4). Sows of parity over six had a farrowing rate of 83% (Table 6). This was lower than the target of 6.2 kg suggested by Carroll (2005)
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