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Prairie Swine Centre is an affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan
Prairie Swine Centre is grateful for the assistance of the George Morris Centre in developing the economics portion of Pork Insight.
Financial support for the Enterprise Model Project and Pork Insight has been provided by:
Nutrition and Management of the Sow to Maximize Lifetime Productivity
Posted in: Production by admin on January 1, 2002 | No Comments
Good nutritional management of the gestating sow will result in a high level of weaned piglet output, minimized wean-to-estrus interval, and increased subsequent litter sizes. These objectives require an excellent gilt development program. Early gilt immunity is essential for when it comes time for herd entry (done be fecal feedback). Gilts should be fed for bone growth and development right up to about their second litter. Lower body weight can lead to a higher wean-to-estrus interval (usually any less than 150 kg is no good). They should be fed to minimize the loss of body protein and fats. There are 3 stages of pregnancy that require different feeding strategies. Maternal growth is important for embryo survival and implantation, and young females should be fed to increase body protein and fat mass without altering body condition. The second stage is bodily growth in order to recover body reserves lost during lactation. This should be for 30 to 45 days and should target 16 to 18 mm of back fat. Late pregnancy is the third stage and it aims to maximize foetal and mammary growth. Sows need much more feed at this stage (at least 7.5 Mcal digestible energy per day) to prevent breakdown of bodily reserves. Feeding the lactating sow should be to maximize feed intake. A lot of energy is required to produce vast amounts of milk and sustain a healthy growing litter of 10+ piglets for 21 days. Lysine and energy content are particularly important nutrients in the diet. Phase feeding for first litter females can also be done in lactation. High feeding from post-weaning to mating has shown a reduction in wean-to-estrus intervals. This leads to a higher percentage showing estrus within 10 days of weaning. First litter sows can be segregated in order to control nutrition and body condition. Piglets from gilts can be segregated because they have less passed on immunity, plus gilts piglets always tend to be smaller. This can impact the finisher barn efficiency. Good gilt nutrition can improve the immunity passed on, even beyond that of colostrum. Good nutrition of the gilt will result in good nutrition of the piglets and their digestive system will develop better.
Increase Profits by Segregating First-Litter Sows/Progeny
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Compared to older sows, first-litter sows have a smaller appetite and lose more weight and backfat in lactation, have a longer (+1 to 2 days) wean-to-first service interval, and are more likely to return later(8 to 12 days) post-weaning which results in smaller litters. Compared to the progeny of older sows first-litter sow progeny may be smaller at birth, grow more slowly in lactation, are lighter at weaning and can take longer to reach market weight. Also first-litter sows do not confer the same degree of immune competence to their progeny through colostrum as older sows, thereby reducing the progeny’s health status. Dr. Camille Moore, a private swine medicine and production consultant from St-Césaire Quebec, developed a novel breeding herd management program that segregates first-litter sows and their progeny from the rest of the herd. This program is being tested in a 10,000-sow herd in
Farnham, Quebec (R. Robitaille Inc.) and, so far, has increased weaning weight and subsequent litter size as well as reducing wean-to-first-service interval. Most established herds cannot completely change their management strategy, but they may benefit by introducing parts of Dr. Moore’s segregation program. This program designates easily accessible areas in the barn for first-litter and ‘thin’ sows, to provide these disadvantaged animals with specialized feeding and management programs. Top-dressing the diet of disadvantaged sows with soybean meal (0.3 kg minimum) for the first 12 days or the entire lactation if specific lactation diets are not fed and raising the progeny of first-litter sows in separate rooms or pens within a barn.
Utilization by pigs of diets containing Cambodian rubber seed meal
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Low-Phytic Acid Barley Improves Calcium and Phosphorus Utilization and Growth Performance in Growing Pigs
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Thirty-five crossbred barrows averaging 13.5 kg starting BW were used in a 35-d experiment to compare the availability of P and the nutritional value of two near-isogenic progeny of the barley cultivar ‘Harrington’. Low-phytic acid barley (LPB, 0.35% total P, 0.14% phytic acid P) was homozygous for the low-phytic acid 1-1 allele, and the normal barley (NB, 0.35% total P, 0.24% phytic acid P) was homozygous for the normal allele of that gene. Pigs were fed individually twice daily in metabolism pens. Barley was the only source of phytate in semipurified diets, 1 to 3. Diet 1 contained 75% NB, 0.14% estimated available P (aP), and 0.50% Ca. Diet 2 contained 75% LPB, 0.22% aP, and 0.50% Ca. No inorganic P (iP) was added to Diets 1 and 2 in order to measure the animal response to the different concentrations of aP in these cultivars. Diet 3 was NB Diet 1 supplemented with iP to equal the concentration of aP in LPB Diet 2. Practical barley-soybean meal (SBM)-type diets, NB Diet 4 and LPB Diet 5, were formulated to meet all minimum nutrient requirements, and contained 0.30% aP and 0.65% Ca. For the semipurified diets, pigs fed LPB Diet 2 had higher (P less than or equal to 0.05) bone ash weight, bone breaking strength, P absorption and retention, and Ca absorption and retention compared with pigs fed NB Diet 1, with a trend (P = 0.10) for pigs fed LPB Diet 2 to have a higher ADG and gain:feed ratio than pigs fed NB Diet 1. However, pigs fed LPB Diet 2 or NB Diet 3 were not different (P greater than or equal to 0.3) in growth performance, fresh bone weight, fat-free dry bone weight, bone ash, bone breaking strength, or N utilization. This indicates that LPB and NB were equal in nutritional value after supplementation of NB with iP to equal the estimated aP in LPB. For the practical barley-SBM diets, there were no differences (P greater than or equal to 0.4) between pigs fed NB Diet 4 or LPB Diet 5 for growth performance, fresh bone weight, bone breaking strength, the percentages of P and Ca utilization, or N, DE, and ME utilization. The use of LPB in pig diets reduced P excretion in swine waste by 55% and 16% in our semipurified and practical diets, respectively, compared with NB. Using our in vitro procedure designed to mimic the digestive system of the pig, the availability of P for pigs was estimated at 52% for LPB and 32% for NB.
Nutrient composition of Kansas Swine Lagoons and Hoop Barn Manure
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Calculating Direction-dependent Separation Distance by a Dispersion Model to avoid Livestock Odour Annoyance
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Using a dispersion model to calculate ambient odour concentrations, the separation distance between
livestock buildings and residential areas is defined by the odour impact criteria incorporating the probability of exceeding a pre-selected odour threshold in odour units (OU) per cubic metre. The dynamic Austrian odour dispersion model (AODM), a Gaussian model, is used to calculate the direction-dependent separation distances for several combinations of these two values, which represent the protection level of various land use categories. The calculated direction-dependent separation distances are a function of the prevailing wind velocity and atmospheric stability conditions. At a site in the Austrian North-alpine foreland, the directiondependent separation distance for a 1000-head pig unit (calculated on the basis of a 2-year time series of meteorological data) for pure residential areas (3% probability of threshold exceedance over the year for an odour threshold of 1OUm3) lies between 99 m(for northerly winds with a probability of less than 3% per year) and 362 m(for westerly winds with a probability of 34%). For themain wind directions, West and East, odour sensation can be expected more often for higher wind velocities and a neutral or stable atmosphere
around sunset. North and South winds show the typical diurnal variation of a local valley wind system with predominantly northerly daytime up-valley and southerly nighttime down-valley winds. Odour sensation is therefore most likely around noon for North winds and during nighttime for South winds.
Odour Generating Bacteria in Swine Manure and Composted Swine Manure Identification by Molecular Techniques
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One of the most important objections to the expansion of the Manitoba livestock industry is the problem of odour from animal wastes. Bacteria ferment manure under anaerobic conditions to produce most of the objectionable odour compounds. Little is known about the microbiology of anaerobic bacteria in manure. Microbiological research has relied on conventional techniques such as growing the bacteria and measuring biochemical properties. Techniques that rely on growing bacteria underestimate the population and the diversity of species of microorganisms present in manure. Most bacterial species present in an environment such as manure cannot be grown. If we cannot culture these bacteria, we cannot measure their contributions to odour compound generation. To overcome this problem, new techniques from the field of molecular genetics have been applied in this study. For each sample, the DNA from all of the bacteria was isolated. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique was applied to produce enough of a specific gene which every bacterium carries, the 16S rRNA gene. While every bacterium carries this gene, the precise sequence of nucleotides of the gene varies amongst different species and can be used to identify a particular bacterium. Nucleotides are the individual building blocks of all genes. Determining the nucleotide sequences is expensive so, in this study, a technique was first used to determine how many different 16S rRNA genes were present. Once this was accomplished, then the most abundant genes actually had their individual nucleotide sequences determined. The technique to indicate the number of different 16S rRNA genes present is called denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis. This technique is based on the principle that each different type of 16S rRNA gene a