Batch Farrowing: A Tool to Bulletproof the Sow Farm

摘要

When one thinks of strategies for safeguarding the health and productivity of a pig farm, the conversation often turns to vaccination or medication programs to prevent or manage health challenges, which in turn will safeguard productivity (with the ultimate goal of optimizing pig welfare and farm profitability!). Obviously there are management strategies available to pig producers that will accomplish this same goal. The industry trend over the past few decades has been to try to fill and empty farrowing/nursery/finisher rooms all at once (all-in-all-out production or AIAO) to reduce the impact of disease transmission from one age group of pigs to another. We also know that a narrower range of ages/weights within a group of pigs allows us to managehealth, medications and diets optimally. This paper will discuss the benefits (and some pitfalls) with batch farrowing as a management strategy to achieve AIAO production thereby optimizing productivity and profitability. Batch farrowing is the strategyof combining multiple weeks of sows into 1 larger group (batch).