Dear Users, This is an interesting forum from our Spanish community, generated by Ervin Poou from Guatemala:
Dear friends, I take this opportunity to solicit comments about Weaning at 14 days as an alternative to increase the piglets produced per sow per year and to reduce mortality from crushing and diarrhea in the whelping box. Please if anyone has had experience in the subject I beg to share them.
On our farm (in the north of Thailand) we use to wean at 25 days and leave the piglets in the farrow cage until day 30. Because of problems, like diarrhea, we have changed. We now wean and move the piglets to the nursery at 20 days old. This has really helped with the diarrhea problem and will increase our piglet output (we sell piglets at 35 days old).
I personally think 14 days old is young to wean but there are occasional litters that could warrant that. These are small litters that are getting a lot of sows milk and because of that are large piglets. Other than that I do not feel the piglets are mature enough to wean at 14 days.
Personally, I do not think weaning to increase production is a good idea. As an emergency to stop diarrhea is okay if normal medications are not working. A baby needs the time with its mother in order to establish its mental and physical character prior to weaning. We are back to weaning at 25 days as this appears to be the healthiest time for the piglet.
And as Noni stated, why waste good milk! The number of "turns" per year gained by weaning earlier is not enough to offset the benefits of the maturing that goes on with a piglet with its mother.
weaning does not increase production at 14 days. dont think the piglets grow as fast at 14 days as they do at 21 and dont think they are quite as bvouncy at 14 days either. Sows dont farrow 3 times a year every year so this is not going to benefit you by waning at 14 days
Another comment - if you have a good and safe designed area for the piglet you should not have any deaths due to the sow laying on a piglet after the piglets are two days old.
If a sow is lazy and just drops down onto her litter she should be culled as she is costing your farm money.
a hot wire around the perimeter of the farrow hut prevents the sow from laying on the piglets or for that matter leaning on the wall. I dont have crates so this is the next best tool to prevent the sows fofrom laying on their piglets.
The other idea is to farrow them a little younger and let them have smaller litters. this teaches them how to mother their piglets and I use this method all the time to encourage the sows to be good mothers. i dont have too many accidents in the way of roll on.s.
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Michael Tamayo
31 de mayo de 2011
a bit too young but occasionally doing it to top up the numbers of pig weaned to fill up the nursery as we weaned an average of 17 days old.
Weaning at 14 days or earlier was used back in the 90's when trying to increased litters/sow/year and for disease control however is was rapidly noticed that the reproductive problems outweighted the benefits. This is because uterine involution requires 21 days so sows weaned early will take longer to come on heat and will also be prone to development of mastitis as Noni pointed after the second week sows produce more milk. It is well documented now that the ealier age of weaning where you get the most benefit for both sows and piglets is 21 days.
The weaning at 14 days, only is justified if you want eliminatión a disease. The handling is very dificult, complex enviroment and facilities needs.
To facilitate the normalization of the uterus can help with prostaglandin.
The normal weaning in the comercial production is between 21 to 28 days. Depends to the climate and others specification
Back in the late 70s we were weaning at 14 days into specially designed weaner sheds ie Pigibox. We also had to use a very expensive high spec diet. As I recall p/w/s/y did not improve by weaning at 14 days due to the above mentioned negatives like weaning to service interval and smaller litters. I would suggest that you should stick at 21 or 28 weaning as the positives far outweigh the negatives. Find out what is causing overlays,is it crate design,cold creeps or anything else and also find out what is causing the scours and prevent it from happening.
I believe early weaning strategies consider all aspects from feeds (nutrition thru phase feeding), sow breed, facilities and management. I totally agree that 21 to 26 days weaning is the most ideal where we don't encounter common problems from diarrhea (thru proper medication program), return to heat of the sow, litter performance when fattened and succeeding furrowing. De-worming management for sows a week before weaning is also advantageous for the sow to return to heat.
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Marcos Tavares
9 de junio de 2011
You are trying to solve problems by bringing others. It is comprovated that weaning at least than 24 days is prejudicial to the number of piglets in the next litter. Finally, diarrhea is a matter of cleaning and desinfection. To get more piglets/litter you will have to work hard on each detail of reproduction, principally the nutritional one. Good work and results !!
Increasing the number of piglets is a matter of breeding. But if you want to increase the number of piglets then sows have to be able to feed them all. So you also have to increase the number of teats that she has. The last thing you want to do is foster or hand rear those that the sows cannot feed, or wean the larger ones first and leave the small one s on mum till they are bigger.
Management of litters is important. Litter numbers or numbers of piglets per litter should increase as the sows become older then as they age they become less. So a litter number of say 7 or 8 should be enuogh and the sow should then be culled. I have one in the first year, and 2 every year after that.
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Michael Tamayo
7 de julio de 2011
a bit too young but can be done sometimes to fill up a nursery, make sure there mark to give extra attention. weaning at 14 days is absolutely not an alternative to increase pig produce per sow and much more in reducing mortality due to crushing but it was use to control a disease. thier is a research that weaning the first parity at 21 days gives a good benefit on thier subsequent litters and we see it in our barn too, of course, if your buying your replacement herd do everything to care them the moment the truck back up in your loading area until the day before you ship them out.
In my experience in the 90’s we wean pigs 14 days during 2 years with a good results but very expensive. We did for health reason. We need to have special rations for the piglets. Productivity during those 2 years was 21 pigs per sow a year. This was a special circumstance. My recommendation for weaning is that you must do an evaluation for the optimal production according with your facilities so you can wean at 21, 24 or 26+ days depending of your projected flow. For commercial production my recommendation is that no wean piglets less than 18 days. Thanks Pablo
Hello, Rafa Durán from Spain. I am a bit puzzled here since it looks as if the initial comment is dating 29th Nov but comments above differ in dates, even from 2010 (!). Weaning at 14 days was done for some time in the US and was implemented in Europe but with variable results and in the end it was not allowed to do it anymore (in EU), where min age is 21 days. Natural weaning is even at much higher ages, 52 days and more; this is non practical and economical, clear enough, but why should we challenge piglets when at 14 days they are still getting milk at its optimal intake in amount and quality (of course we must keep lactating sows in good condition, but this is another story). Weaning is a huge challenge, let´s wait until 21-28 days of age and we will increase survival rate and reduce scouring problems. The digestive tract need mainly energy to develop, the best energy - digestibility wise - is coming from milk. The heavier at weaning the piglet, the less days to slaughter they will show. Cheers.
There are several occasion of weaned at 14 days, however it could not work for all litter size. the biiger piglets could done at 14 days, but the smaller should be leave with the sow. In Minahasa North Sulawesi Indonesia we have done it ...
Universidad ISA (Instituto Superior de Agricultura)
4 de enero de 2012
In Brazil the company Genetiporc has implemented an interesting technique, Partial Early Weaning (PEW), they withdraw from the 12 days the two more vigorous piglets in each litter and end partial weaning at 18 days, to apply this technique is necessary to use 4 face of feed, beginning with a phase 0 with a minimum of 25% lactose and have a weaning room temperature of 32 oc minimum.
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