Piglet Survival: One of the Keys to Profitability (Part 1)

It is no secret to hog producers that piglet survival is one of the keys to profitability.  When I was a “First-Week Farrowing Supervisor” for Agri-Vest, I was very fast to pull pigs to try and decrease the incidence of stillborn piglets.  Once a sow had started farrowing, I would pull a pig if 20 minutes passed and there was no piglet born.  I would then administer Oxytocin, and usually there were no more complications.  Since I pulled piglets from a fair number of sows, I gave all sows a 20 cc shot of Penicillin the day after they farrowed.  I experience very little infection problems. 

When I had a sow that developed mastitis, I would administer a remedy that my company had gotten from a swine specialist.  It was 1 part Dipyrone, 1 part Oxytocin, and 3 parts Liquid Vitamins.  When I worked at a Veterinarian Hospital, Dipyrone had been taken off the market, but you need to check with your veterinarian for his remedy for Mastitis in sows!  Also with a 20 cc injection of this “Mastitis Cocktail”, I would give a 20 cc shot of Penicillin in a separate spot.  I would give this regimen of treatment for three days straight.  It worked so well that I usually did not have to pull a sow’s piglets off of her.  Also the piglets did not seem to suffer much of a setback! This “Mastitis Cocktail” worked so well that I come up with a regimen to use on sows that laid on a pig.  It was the same minus the Oxytocin. It seemed to really help cut down on a sow laying on multiple piglets!  All of this could be summed up in saying that the pig producer wants to get piglets and sows off to a good start from farrowing, to nursing colostrum, to nursing that rich sow’s milk. 

We tried to raise every piglet, so that meant trying real hard to raise the runt piglets.  I had a personal rule of trying to never punish the big pigs in order to save the small pigs.  So, with this concept in mind, I always cross-fostered the smallest piglets.  I would take a gilt, or parity- 2 sow, with fine nipples, and would create a “Small-Sort”.  I would place 10 to 12 small piglets together on this “Small-Sort”.  Our parity-2 sows often had low Born-Alive numbers, so they were often loaded up with small pigs. 

Whenever my manager would let me, I would use nurse sows to try and save starved down piglets.  It was usually the cull sows that he let me use, but if the cull sow weaned 5 pigs, then I had 5 teats to work with.  If she weaned 8, then I had 8 teats to work with.  We would put the nurse sows in our over-flow farrowing house, where we had multiple ages of piglets.  The ability to use a nurse sow was determined by (#1)  Available crate space  (#2)  Breeding Herd needs and the ability to cull sows and  (#3)  The presence of starved down piglets.  I once had a Maternal-Line sow that aborted at day 110, when we had a problem that I think was a Parvo problem.  This sow “rescued” 40 starved down or small piglets before she went on the cull load. 

Heat pads +/or Heat lamps were used.  These should be checked for proper operation before the Farrowing has started.  Though I never have had the privilege of using Hoovers, I love the concept.  All this is aimed at keeping the newly born piglets, who have low energy stores, warm and comfortable.  This, and a draft-free environment, cannot be over emphasized. 

Runt piglets can be syringe feed some colostrum milk from their sow, or held up a teat to get some colostrum before being moved to a “Small-Sort”.  Their own mother’s colostrum milk is actually best for them. 

Lastly, but not least, strive to keep all of your sows in their comfort zone (roughly 60-75 degrees).  This can be done in the hot summer months by using evaporative cooling pads, sow drippers, or snout vents (tubes).