Weaning is one of the first major stressors (after birth) in a little pig's life. Separation from mom, a new house, figuring out eating solid food, and drinking water are big learning experiences. Anything we can do as caretakers to ease the process will help the pigs get off to a good start. If we did our best to have healthy, well cared for pigs pre-weaning it helps a lot, but there are still some tips and tricks that will get the pigs started off right.
1. Keep it clean!
Having a clean, warm, and dry pen for the pigs to be weaned into reduces the risk for disease to develop and spread. Between groups of wean pigs, we make sure to wash and disinfect every surface- from the floor to the ceiling- then allow them to dry overnight. Rooms are heated to approximately 84 degrees, so it's nice and cozy for the little ones coming in. When checking barns each day, we start with the youngest and move to the oldest. This is to keep the little pigs safe from anything that might be going around in the older pigs. Just like people, pigs will get the flu, or a cold, but the older they are when they get it, the less problems they will face.
2. Make Water easy to Find
While little pigs are on the sow, they have water available, but if everything is going good with mom they may not ever use it. This means when the pigs are weaned they have to figure out a new drinking system- either out of a nipple, bowl, or pan. We train the pigs to drink a few different ways, depending on what type of system is in place in the barn.
For our older barns, there are water nipples with bowls underneath them. We loosen the nipples so they leak into the bowls, and the pigs will drink from the bowls the first few days. After a few days, they find the nipples, train themselves how to use them, and we can stop the leaking. This takes the caretaker observing how the pigs are doing and deciding when they are trained well enough to drink out of the nipples. In our newer barns we have shallow, gravity-fed pans that fill with a fresh supply of water constantly. These are easy for the pigs to find, and they pretty much manage themselves. Of course, all systems have to be monitored, but it seems like the little pigs figure this out pretty fast.
3. Transition from Milk to Dry Feed
For the early part of a pig's life, all nutrition comes from mother's milk. Over that time, the pigs grow and change rapidly. Their guts begin to develop for solid food, and if left on mom long enough they will start to get a scour (diarrhea) from not having solid food available to eat. The start of transitioning pigs to solid food begins while the piglet is still in its litter. For the week before weaning, we provide a little bit of solid feed to the pigs each day. This allows them to get used to the sight, smell, and taste of the solid food they will be eating after weaning.
Once weaned, we make sure the feeders are full of this rich, yummy- smelling feed. The pigs probably recognize it as something familiar from pre-weaning, and usually will go to it within the first day- which is pretty fast considering how much stress they have been under. For the smaller pigs that might not be so sure, we can feed them on a rubber mat. On the mat we may mix the feed with an electrolyte gel (think Pedialyte in "Gu" form) to give them an extra boost, since the piglets that avoid feed are probably also the ones that have a slow start on drinking, too. We will only do this for a couple of days, and then transition to the feeder.
By doing these 3 things we minimize stress, begin to transition the gut, and provide a healthy environment for the young piglets. Next week, we will look at the hot-button issue of reducing antibiotic use on farms. For some background information, check my posts on How we work with our Vets, Manage Herd Health, and as an industry Manage Antibiotic Use.
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