Improving Piglet Survival

摘要

A viable piglet is one that will adapt to the extra-uterine environment and survive the pre-weaning period. There are certain aspects of a piglet's physiology and behaviour which potentially aid this task including: an optimum birth weight; favourablelitter size; physiologically mature organ functions maintaining homeostasis; and the ability to behaviourally adapt to obtain vital nutrients from the sow. Maternal physiology and the quality of maternal behaviour are also integral to piglet success. The advent of super-prolific breeding programmes to achieve production targets of 35-40 piglets per sow per year challenges both the sow and piglets meaning that measures for improving survival need to be optimised. Such measures include progression in genetic selection strategies which incorporate survivability within breeding goals, alterations to the farrowing environment and augmentation of both management solutions and nutritional programmes. This article will focus on solutions, with more in depth reviews about the causes of the different types of piglet death and the risk factors that interact to predispose these events described elsewhere (e.g. Edwards, 2002; Edwards and Baxter 2015).