Young mammals get two equally important beginnings at nutritional growth and development: when they begin nursing shortly after birth, and then later when they start eating solid food on their own. It’s not easy being a baby, but weaning piglets are particularly subject to a host of stresses that follow them from the sow to mingling with other litters and varying ages of pig flows.
Learning to like the feed enough to eat up is challenging enough — but this is also a critical window in the pig’s development for both helping prime their body’s later grow-finish gains and equipping it to turn nutrients into building blocks toward a stronger immune system for life.
It’s a challenge I relish, as Carthage Veterinary Service’s (CVS) nutrition consultant to independent producers, and I enjoy the prospect of putting together a diet for each barn that gets their nursery pigs off to a great start.
When Crumble is Best
One of the more impactful things I learned about pig development early in my career came from Dean Boyd, a prominent animal nutritionist retired from The Hanor Company now serving as an adjunct professor for North Carolina State and Iowa State universities. He told me the most important diet in a pig’s life is their first nursery diet; and the second most important is their second-phase nursery diet.
Producers want a nursery diet that helps the piglets with higher lactose levels while cutting back on crude protein content. There are different types of lactose sources to consider, including whey and sugar; I like sugar over traditional whey for getting the newly weaned piglet started on feed, since it tends to ensure happy eating.
I am also a fan of including steam-rolled oats, since this is a good way to bind within the piglet’s digestion system and cut down on scours. Partly for this reason, I typically recommend a crumble diet for first-time eaters — CVS trials over the past couple years have shown that young pigs seem to respond better to this type of diet than mash or pellets. Even if all three have the same formulation of grains and nutrients, the form it takes matters, and we do tend to see less diarrhea from crumble diets overall.
When transitioning to the second-phase nursery diet, producers shouldn’t make any great, sudden changes in formulation. Yes, the pigs will likely need an updated mix of ingredients, but a gradual change is less likely to put them off eating as much as they should.
A Better Lactation Station
Of course, we have to get young pigs to the wean stage before any of this, which means ensuring their mothers can provide healthy colostrum and plentiful milk during their first weeks of life. Embedded in this is the additional consideration of feeding to maintain the sow’s health as she is nursing 12 or more piglets, so she can recover to estrus sooner than later after weaning.
Because we are expecting so much physically from sows, it’s important to take into account all the factors that affect their eating — we can discuss lysine, calcium, energy, phosphorus and more in their lactation diet formulation, but that all only matters insofar as the sow actually feels like eating her daily recommendation.
For instance, weather, time of year, and geography have a significant impact on her appetite. On a hot summer day, nursing sows are apt to consume 0.5 to 1 pound less feed than they would in milder or cold weather. Not only is that a significant percentage of desired daily intake, if it continues over days or weeks, that shortage adds up to impact nursing piglets as well as her body condition.
Producers need to be aware of strategies to counter this, such as increasing synthetic amino acid additives for milk production, adding fats or perhaps including an appetent to improve flavor. Or maybe there is too much soybean meal in the formulation. Research in the past few years has shown including a high ratio of soymeal — around 35% or more — can actually limit their intake, especially for gilts and younger sows.
In most lactation feeding systems consisting of multi-parity sows, I recommend the producer formulate to the younger-parity gilts and sows. Some other nutritionists advise feeding to the average, but this often deprives the parity 1 and 2 sows of sufficient nutrition to both nurse and maintain body condition, since these younger mothers tend to consume 10% to 15% less feed on average than older-parity sows. Again, it also helps them recover to breed back faster.
Live Link: www.porkbusiness.com/news/hog-production/oats-and-more-give-your-nursery-pig-diets-healthy-boost
Early adopters have been amassing and recording data for a quarter-century or so. How do we turn that data into information, and information into knowledge?
Finding the right balance between taking beneficial preventative measures and not spending an over-budgeted amount on pharmaceuticals
As a pork producer, you can’t personally control how far north the New World screwworm advances, but you can protect your own operations and interests as much as possible.
Finding the right balance between taking beneficial preventative measures and not spending an over-budgeted amount on pharmaceuticals
Finding the right balance between taking beneficial preventative measures and not spending an over-budgeted amount on pharmaceuticals
Finding the right balance between taking beneficial preventative measures and not spending an over-budgeted amount on pharmaceuticals
Finding the right balance between taking beneficial preventative measures and not spending an over-budgeted amount on pharmaceuticals
Finding the right balance between taking beneficial preventative measures and not spending an over-budgeted amount on pharmaceuticals
Dustin Coleman raises wean pigs under contract on his farm in Missouri.
Producers are extremely good at several things: working hard, caring for their animals, and planning.
