THE ISSUE OF PRE-WEANING MORTALITY

Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Production by admin on May 10, 2017

Pre-weaning mortality is a complex subject, as there are many factors that often lead to the final demise of the piglet. For example, “crushing” is often recorded to be the cause of death, but the piglet could have been chilled, causing it to lay beside the dam for warmth, which led to the piglet being laid on. Farms that have good management practices, to reduce the influence of environment and health on the sow and piglet, are usually able to accomplish what would be considered very low levels of pre-weaning mortality. In other complicated cases, getting mortality down to targets of less than 10% can be quite challenging and frustrating.

3 major factors were discussed regarding PWM.

1. Animal Factors

• Piglet
  • Birth weight
  • Colostrum intake within 6-8 hours
  • Fostering of piglets to reduce PWM
• Sow
  • Sows that farrow in the gestation barn are a huge cause of profit loss and reinforce the need for good record keeping and stockmanship
  • Sow nutrition prior to and during lactation
  • A sow’s rectal temperature will increase immediately prior to and after parturition, but if it continues to be elevated for more than 24 hours, this would be abnormal

2. Environmental factors

• Heat lamps have been shown to be superior to heat pads, however any source, is preferable to no heat source.
• All in all out is superior over continuous flow in terms of PWM
• Sanitation of farrowing rooms should be performed between every batch.
  • Allow to dry for as long as possible
• Washing of sows prior to farrowing has been shown to have a significant impact on PWM
• Vaccination programs should be reviewed on a regular basis
  • Feed-back for scour management

3. Human factors

• Significant decrease in PWM if sows are farrowing while there are competent staff present

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