Pig how many piglets

Females must be fed at least three times per day from Day 3, post-farrowing, to maximize feed intake. With automatic sow feeders, sows can be fed up to five times per day: a. A big trend in recent years is the move to automatic lactation feeders, either the INTAK ad-lib lactation feeding system from Automated Production Systems or the straight tube feeder.

Provide sows maximum amounts of feed from weaning to breeding, and feed above maintenance levels from breeding to 30 days of gestation. Treat thin sows as an emergency. Lean genetics require much more feed to get back into normal weight ranges. Devote time to the job. Walk slowly. Look at each sow carefully.

Be prepared to stop and check individuals. Focus on your task. Establish a consistent daily schedule that makes breeding simple and uses a team breeding lineup to drop feed, walk the barn, provide feedback, clean, check semen, heat check and breed groups. In fact, bacterial contamination, acrosome integrity problems, different concentrations and poor standard deviation in counts can all lead to lower farrowing rates and total born. Boar studs and farms that collect semen should monitor for these issues every collection day.

Among the most common bacterial contaminations are pseudomonas, eptococcus and Cornebacterium staphylococcus. Identify your problem areas, find out when pigs die and what can be done to make a difference. This problem can be reduced through induced farrowings, attended farrowings, proper sow condition and parity management. Watch especially for sows with a history of stillborns. Mark farrowing cards when the room is loaded as an easy visual check for sows with a history of stillborn problems.

Recognize early on when a sow is having farrowing difficulty to ease stillborn problems. Possible signs include:. Old sows noticeably increase stillborn rates Figure 1. Most preweaning mortality occurs within the first 48 to 72 hours of farrowing, so the more attention paid to the 1- to 4-day-old pig, the less work needed later, Loula states.

Energy management is a solution to saving challenged piglets. Along with split suckling and hot boxes to warm and dry off piglets, Loula advises the following colostrum management steps:. Colostrum is made up of two components: antibodies and cells. Antibodies primarily protect against bacterial diseases such as E.

Specialized white blood cells primarily protect against porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, swine influenza virus, porcine circovirus type 2 and other viruses. Protective antibodies can be obtained from any sow; however, the cellular portion of colostrum only comes from the newborn's mother. That's why it is vital for pigs to suckle their mother before crossfostering, Loula reminds. The causes may be infectious and non-infectious. Among the infectious causes the main ones are: Parvovirus, Leptospira sp.

Among the non-infectious causes are: absence of uterine space, stress, seasonality, number of parities, etc. Porto Alegre, Thanks for the education. From all I gathered it means from the 4th parity the sow should be culled except you feel she is still going to give you good litter again.

It also means depending on the prevailing factors observed a sow can produce up 10 litters. Thanks so much for these submission am also a farmer in the same industry and l h have learnt that a pig reaches its peak on the fourth parity. My challenge is my does Farrow agood number of piglets but smush almost 50percent. Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. How many piglets do sows produce throughout their lives? Can a pig give birth 10 times Reply. Hello, Jerome! If you have any questions, we are available. Thank you! Hello, Lydia! Give it another chance Reply. Can i have it served once more Reply. Hello, Marion. It is possible that a pig can give birth with a 20 piglets? The precondition of a normal distribution was fulfilled.

Therefore, it was contemplated in parallel throughout the study. X denotes the incidence matrix of fixed effects, Z matrix of direct additive-genetic effects. I e identity matrix and R variance-covariance structure of residuals. Computer programs VCE 5. A repeatability model was therefore not applied for any of the traits. The relative additive variance components representing the heritability coefficients are shown for both samples Table 2.

Three to four percent yielded the same maximum more than twice. Almost all estimated trait phenotypic correlation coefficients were significant Table 3. This seems advantageous when focusing on a very early breeding decision. In commercial swine production, litter size is a key trait. However, individual numbers of total born and piglets born alive vary in subsequent parities.

So far, this fact has hardly been targeted as a special parameter of sows. In this study, individual ranges of TBP were chosen to do so as a simple trait in order to draw attention to this problem and to suggest coping with. For this reason and to respecting the individual feeding capacity of a sow, searching for an individual optimum TBP should be a target in pig breeding. In the investigated material, a clear trend of increasing mean performances in TBP and NBA of first parity were observed during to This suggests potential for respecting individual variation without necessarily decreasing litter sizes on average.

Litter size traits in pigs are likely more affected by maternal than by paternal components. One might argue that the number of five individual parities to evaluate the genetic capacity of TBP and individual variation is a challenging limitation. Which parameter really matters for evaluating a sow for litter size with respect to efficiency? This trait should be evaluated in order to find a basis for choosing the optimum. Due to the large part of crossing sows included in RACOM, this could be a response of favorable non-additive components triggering more stabilizing factors on expressing these traits.

On the other hand, despite fewer sows with trait observations, the pedigree was much larger for RACOM than for RA01, a fact that could have caused higher heritability estimates. Selecting sows with an individual optimum TBP respective NBA for breeding could contribute to more phenotypically and especially environmentally balanced sustainability. Priority should be given to feeding capacity and maternal behavior. Birth weight of each single piglet could likely be an additional co-variable in evaluating litter size traits [ 8 ].

However, such data was not available for this study. NBA in first parity was analyzed in parallel resulting in very similar heritability estimates as reported before [ 5 ]. A selection effect on sows under study was therefore not suspected. No earlier reports based on individual maxima and on individual female variation of TBP have been found in the literature related to pig breeding.

For a deeper insight into the genetics of litter size and related traits, SNP technology is being widely adapted. Such studies have been reviewed [ 10 ], and candidate genes of reproduction traits in sows were reported based on different pig populations, partly with contradictory results [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Non-additive effects of single candidate genes or chromosomal segments interacting with others could play a different role for TBP and NBA in first and higher parities [ 11 ].

Therefore, patterns of age-dependently inter- acting genes, and genes affecting environmental sensitivity, could also affect the individual variation of traits related to litter size. Two candidate genes contributing to variation in TBP were reported [ 8 ]. One of them is involved in buffering environmental and genetic factors.

More detailed investigations on the basis of a genome wide association study and surely using methods allowing for genotype by environmental interactions could lead to increasing the knowledge on the responsible genes, multifold induced interactions and their functions.

Focusing on sows being extremely different in their individual variation in litter size would be of value in this continuing research process. Information on the individual maximum is more suited to reflect the genetic proliferative potential of the sow. Many sows reached their maximum of 13 to 16 piglets in a parity more than once.

A sufficient evaluation of sows regarding both their individual capacity in litter size and the related individual variation e. Individual number of still born piglets in a parity adjusted for fixed effects of herd, year and season of farrowing.

Other specific symbols were used only once in the methods section with explanation. A review of factors influencing litter size in Irish sows. Irish Veterinary J.

Article Google Scholar. An investigation of induced parturition, birth weight, birth order, litter size, and sow parity on piglet serum concentrations of immunoglobulin G.

J Swine Health Prod.