The most stressful time in a piglet’s life is the day it says goodbye to mom. After spending three or four weeks in a farrowing room, it is time for junior to go to nursery school.

There are ways in the farrowing room to take some of the stress out of that moment in every piglet’s life. The space, the food and an enriched environment can make a big difference, according to Dr. Jennifer Brown, a research scientist at the Prairie Swine Centre.

“We recognize that the farrowing room is actually a very critical area in swine production. It is the command central for swine production,” she said during a presentation at the Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2015. “This is where it happens —the sows and piglets are together there and it is a very important stage for both of their lives.

“We are accommodating a very large sow and these very small piglets. We have to provide care for that sow and her litter.”

Dr. Brown says the crate is important. Size matters. She said there are multiple designs on the market now. Some are simple and some high-tech. Much of the legwork on these is being done in Europe.

“The old design of farrow crates was more like a five-by-seven footprint. However, this is not large enough for our large modern sows. We are weaning larger piglets. Certainly they are faster growing now and we’re often moving to longer weaning times so there really isn’t a lot of space for the litter in there. So we are looking at new designs with a seven-by-seven footprint and that being kind of a minimum.”

Dr. Brown said the industry has to meet the needs of its sows. “How can we improve her feed consumption and maintain a high level of milk output, maintain her body condition through a high lactation period and keep her ready for rebreeding once she is weaned off.”

Feeding is Number One, she said. “We have done quite a lot of work in terms of sow feeders and there are a lot of improved sow feeders on the market now. These are generally ad lib feeders and provide feed on demand. There are high tech and low tech ways of doing that, but the main purpose is to avoid spill feed so you are not just dumping a huge quantity of feed in that trough and expecting the sow to access it when she wants. We are avoiding feed wastage or avoiding feed spoilage as moisture as flies accumulate on the large volume of feed. This will also stimulate her feed consumption and maintain lactation milk output. With sow feeding, I think we are doing very well there,” Dr. Brown said.

The same isn’t always true when it comes to providing comfort. “With sow comfort, we are providing an area that is promoting cleanliness to reduce any disease transmission and keep those piglets clean. So there is less emphasis on comfort in a farrowing crate than there is on cleanliness. Also, we’re more focussed on providing more for piglets, than say, making sows more comfortable. It’s not the ideal place in terms of sow comfort.” She said a sow should have a comfortable area where she can lie laterally and feed her pigs. Some of the new farrowing crates have space for the sow to turn around. “We certainly recognize the space is quite limited because it does take up a large part of a barn so we have restricted that to as small as possible in order to save space. Also the sow is restricted within that farrowing crate to protect the piglets, so we have reduced mortality losses.”

Dr. Brown also spoke about meeting the needs of piglets in the farrowing room. “In most farrowing rooms you will see very healthy piglets and they grow amazingly quickly.” Then there was a “but.” “But I think there is a lot more we could do to prepare them for the weaning event to come and prepare them for the rest of their life in terms of their growing phase certainly if you are going to use these animals as replacement stock.”

Leaving farrowing isn’t easy. “Weaning is so stressful because you are giving them multiple stressers at the same time. The best strategy in terms of terms of reducing weaning stress is to isolate those individual stressers.” She said getting them on a solid diet removes one stresser.

“Improving creep feed consumption is one we try to do. We recognize providing creep in that farrowing crate is going to familiarize that pig with solid food, prepare the gut and teach them to recognize solid food. There has been a lot of research done on this and we know creep feed can benefit piglets.”

Like dining at a fine restaurant, she said food presentation does make a difference. She said studies at the Prairie Swine Centre have found when feed is presented with enrichments; it makes a marked difference in consumption.

Dr. Brown said the difference in visits to feeders were significantly higher when a tray feeder was enriched with something as simple as a cotton rope suspended above it. She said one study found there were about four times the number of visits to the enriched feeder than to a standard round one.

“More importantly, after weaning, the tray-feeding piglets showed no weaning growth check whereas the piglets on the standard feeder did have a growth check in those first few days after weaning. So it was obviously familiarizing them more easily with the creep feed.”

She said having litters from two sows co-mingle before going to the nursery also showed improved results. The barrier between two crates was removed when the piglets were 12 days old.

“Piglets showed much reduced aggression at weaning because they have had that socialization at that critical period. They had improved weight gain when they went into the nursery because there was much less fighting among the piglets.

“I would say the farrowing room is an important learning environment so if we can increase their experience with feed and social interaction and enrichment that will better prepare them for that weaning experience in the nursery.” •

— By Cam Hutchinson