Back to School on Sow Feeding

Feeding the sow is often seen as a routine job that doesn’t require much thought – this couldn’t be further from the truth!  Both research and experience on pig units clearly show that incorrect feeding dry and lactating sows can have a direct effect on performance and profit.

Achieving high intakes in the farrowing house is an essential part of sow feeding.  It will give a number of benefits including:

A rule of thumb is that 40% of sow feed should be lactation ration.  Recent Pig Benchmarking data shows an improvement in sow feeding, but with an average of 36% of sow feed being lactation ration, there is still room for improvement.  Of course there is a wide variation between units will some falling well below the target.

Benchmarking results show that those units feeding a greater proportion of lactation ration achieve better performance.  Units feeding 40% of total sow feed as lactation ration achieve almost 0.5 more pigs sold per year than those feeding under 30% lactation ration.  Also those feeding the lower proportion of lactation ration had a 4% higher replacement rate for sows.

There are still a significant proportion of producers feeding the same ration during the dry and lactation periods.  There is very little difference in the number of pigs sold per sow between units feeding one ration and those feeding specific dry and lactating sow rations.  However when the quantity of rations fed and cost per ton are considered, the cost of feeding the sow is almost £10 per year more on units feeding one ration.  So convenience costs!

Reviewing sow rations with your fed supplier or nutritionist, along with special attention to feeding during lactation, could well pay dividends on your unit.  Who knows, next year you could be top of the class!

Mark Hawe, Greenmount Campus, and Philip and Gareth McCrea discuss the feeding of groups of in-pig gilts.