Almost everything that sets up sows for a good lifetime performance happens before first weaning. Age, weight, and back fat at first estrus have a very little effect on the longevity of the sow. In reality, general body condition at first weaning is probably the most important factor for retention in the herd. The most important factors appear to be: full incorporation of the animal into the herd prior to breeding, breeding gilts at the second estrus, breeding gilts between 135 and 145 kg of body weight, breeding gilts at 190 days, and breeding gilts with 15 to 17 mm of back fat. In any system, it is optimum to know weight, age, and back fat at first mating. Many producers have gilt development units with a specific section or building for gilts, and have special feed for first lactation, but still do not achieve good results. This could be because of poor P1 management. New breeding herd entrants must be adapted to the health status before 130 days of age. Gilt development can be improved by giving them 0.9 square meters per animal, using a specialized diet, using a specific light pattern, performing boar exposure after 150 days of age, and vaccinations. At 185 days (or 125 kg) gilts should be moved into the breeding barn in pens of 10. Direct boar contact is essential. Incoming gilts that have not shown estrus after 28 days should be culled. Estrus should be detected twice per day and mated 12 hours after detection, and then every 12 hours after that until the gilt no longer stands. Once in the gestation barn the gilts should have 3 different feeding regimes based on weight and back fat. After 80 days of gestation the gilts should be moved to the farrowing units. Vaccinations should be done and diet increased. Induction should occur at 115 days of gestation. After 6 days of lactation, milk replacement may need to be added to the farrowing crates. At weaning, all P1 sows should receive Regumate for 5 days, starting on the day of weaning. After this treatment boar exposure should start and mating should begin after 12 hours of detected estrus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Almost everything that sets up sows for a good lifetime performance happens before first weaning. Age, weight, and back fat at first estrus have a very little effect on the longevity of the sow. In reality, general body condition at first weaning is probably the most important factor for retention in the herd. The most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[930],"tags":[10821,11119,8882,640,27136,1060,5162,2471,5117,2349,2344,1972,9628,19644,577,21088,23694,4663,5886,103,1468,2851,6904,46,108,24991,102,13335,20007,105,7781,3322,111,61,5381,6559,48,2897,7258,10859,3465,63,16262,17743,18599,20617,104,96,10101,20911,4874,52,6053,27183,77,1301],"class_list":["post-3882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-production","tag-28-day","tag-28-days","tag-al","tag-animal","tag-back-fat","tag-barn","tag-boar","tag-body-condition","tag-body-weight","tag-breed","tag-breeding","tag-condition","tag-contact","tag-dd","tag-diet","tag-differentiation-parity-management","tag-dir","tag-don","tag-farrow","tag-farrowing","tag-farrowing-crates","tag-fat","tag-fee","tag-feed","tag-feeding","tag-first-mating","tag-gestation","tag-gestation-barn","tag-gh","tag-gilt","tag-gilt-development","tag-gilts","tag-health","tag-lactation","tag-light","tag-longevity","tag-management","tag-mating","tag-milk","tag-nat","tag-pea","tag-performance","tag-pl","tag-prod","tag-replacement","tag-scott-dee-prrs-stable-inactive-herd","tag-sow","tag-sows","tag-start","tag-t","tag-tan","tag-treatment","tag-use","tag-vaccinations","tag-weaning","tag-weight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}