This year was writing-heavy for our research team at Carthage. Sow feeding trials and using bioluminescence to illuminate biosecurity represented just a few of the published papers that we hope will give producers better tools to manage their herds and reap a higher return on investment.

Sow eating habits on litter outcome

“Characterizing Sow Feed Intake During Lactation to Explain Litter and Subsequent Farrowing Performance” pulls from a robust data set of more than 4,000 sows over a two-year period. The last study examining lactation feed intake in this manner is more than 30 years old — in addition to updating that data, this study follows those sows through their next lactation.

We investigated different sow feed intake patterns during lactation and average daily feed intake within parity. What we found is that sows that have consistently low ADFI through the lactation period tend to produce litters with a significant reduction in average wean weight and higher pre-wean mortality, and they need one or more additional days to return to estrus — compared with sows with above-average ADFI during lactation.

Many sow farms don’t have the capability or resources to sort and feed multiple lactation diets based on parity and age. For this reason, most swine producers tend to formulate their diet for the “average” sow, but in reality, there is no such thing; in fact, we estimate that only about 6.7% of real sows actually align with the “average” description.

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What this means is that because younger sows (parity 1 and 2) tend to eat less than their more mature counterparts (P3-P5), and most sow farms right now tend toward low-parity populations because they don’t retain as many older sows, we frequently see the types of losses with these young sows’ litters that I outlined above. We sort of expected these results, but it was valuable to actually be able to document it through trials.

Our purpose was to show that the younger sows eating less need additional support to reach a healthy ADFI for the lower mortality and higher wean weight of their P3-P5 sisters. Since most producers know to make feed readily available to lactating sows, the challenge is getting all of them to eat up. This might mean using one or more tactics to induce the appetite of younger sows: new feed formulations, top-dressings and/or getting these girls to walk more to stimulate appetite.

Let’s take a deeper look into this part of the previous paragraph: new feed formulations. Another study we recently published examined “Effects of Increasing SID Lysine and Metabolizable Energy Levels in Lactation Diets Fed to Young and Mature Sows.” Since younger sows were not meeting their daily ADFI through feed volume, we wanted to see if increasing these two additives above the recommended levels would boost litter metrics and subsequent sow reproductive performance.

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When we increased ME in the diet of all sows, we did see noticeable improvement in the P1 and P2 animals in litter weight and performance, and an increase in piglets weaned — they raised litters that were about 4 kilograms heavier at weaning and that gained 148 grams more weight daily and accumulated 2.6 kg more total litter weight during lactation, compared to P1 and P2 control sows. There was not much difference observed for the mature sows, but remember: They were already largely eating enough feed daily to meet the recommended SID Lys and ME levels.

Increasing lysine for both populations had less of a plus-effect, perhaps because there was potentially already enough in their regular diet.

One might presume that increasing both ME and lysine would trigger a combined performance improvement; however, we actually saw a detrimental impact on all sows’ subsequent performance. On breed-back, young sows had a wean-to-estrus interval that was 4+ days longer than those not fed both. Even mature sows’ WEI was nearly three days longer.

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This means there is some interaction that results from increasing ME and lysine together that definitely warrants further study. In the meantime, producers may want to consider the ROI of extra spending for ME additives in their individual operations.

Feeding frequency for farrowing

Another feeding issue connected to litter metrics involves whether there are benefits to frequent feeding for farrowing and soon-to-farrow sows. “Neither Increasing the Frequency of Sow Feedings Nor Decreasing the Interval Between Feedings Prior to Farrowing Reduced Piglet Stillbirths” contributes to the literature on this topic, in which there is already much conflicting information.

There is a farrowing duration of about 240 minutes that is considered typical or safe for a sow; going longer results in an increase in stillbirths. The hypothesis for why is that the sow is running low on energy and less likely to deliver living piglets. Because sows farrow three more piglets per litter on average now than 20 years ago, it makes sense that the time for delivery would also be longer.

It seems difficult to change a farrowing sow’s metabolism, so the best way to help her would seem to lie in diet, management or some other factor. How can we feed her and reduce the interval between when she last ate and when she farrows?

In this study of 1,501 sows divided roughly equally between older and younger parity structures, we kept the same feed allocation but trialed different frequencies, trying to close the gap between feeding intervals. We found that two or three meals dividing the daily feed allotment instead of just one meal resulted in no change to stillborn rates, regardless of farm health status or parity structure.

This tells us there is clearly something more advanced going on inside the sow that isn’t just about feeding intervals. One recommendation producers can take from this study is that perhaps they don’t have to spend extra time and labor on feeding sows in shorter intervals prior to farrowing — on the other hand, maintain good husbandry and don’t just feed that girl once a day and not check on her again!

As litter sizes continue to increase and farrowing times likely follow, it’s important to continue investigating how to best aid the sow in her process, that will cut stillborn rates. There is still a lot of area for improvement in this arena.

Shedding light on a common problem

Adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, bioluminescence is used in several industries — including healthcare and foodservice — to determine overall cleanliness of surfaces. The technology works by measuring ATP in organic matter such as microbes, which triggers a reaction similar to a firefly’s tail lighting up. The more organic matter on a surface, the more ATP and the brighter the reaction.

While this tech doesn’t identify or directly measure specific pathogens (yet!), it does act as a proxy to notify that some type of organic matter is still present. Our two studies’ names are fairly descriptive for what they did: “Evaluation of ATP Bioluminescence for Rapid Determination of Farrowing Room Cleanliness After Pressure Washing at a Commercial Sow Farm” and “Evaluation of ATP Bioluminescence for Rapid Determination of Cleanliness of Livestock Trailers After a Commercial Wash.”

The bioluminescence detection allows a producer, driver or other responsible party to be able to decide whether to do another wash in real-time. Up to now, the only other way to determine the presence of potential pathogens has been to swab a sample and send off to a lab, which is not practical for the busy, fast pace of a sow farm!

Both studies note that bioluminescence detection for rapid feedback on surface cleanliness is promising. For use on livestock trailers, particularly, its usefulness is likely to be judged on how simple it is to implement and interpret the results. In both studies we noted it will be important to establish critical limits of a baseline surface’s cleanliness based on the luminometer being used; and that these limits should be regularly reviewed to determine cleaning procedure, effectiveness and calibration of equipment.

Weaned pigs are transported over a wide geographic area, so it stands to reason that two critical spaces for cleanliness to better ensure their health and survivability are the farrowing room and livestock trucks. This technology is really exciting, because not only does it provide real-time data for decision-making, it could be used to assist with improving biosecurity protocols.