By Jorge Estrada, Ph.D., Carthage Veterinary Service

One of the most common concerns I hear from producers is their young sow performance. When looking at that first farrowing and first lactation, how can they keep these gilts on pace with the rest of the barn? This complaint also traces back to production teams frustrated with trying to get those animals to eat better.

It can be extremely challenging, as this is a big transition time for that animal, from the physical changes she is going through for the first time and the new environment in the farrowing crate with a different water and feed setup. Because of this stress and change, gilts tend to have a lower feed intake, by around 25%, than older parity animals.

So, with similar nutrition requirements and in the same barn conditions but with vastly different feed intakes, how can we manage variation in the barn?

Status quo

Usually, diets are formulated to an “average” sow — maybe a parity three with 17 total born, for example. Through data analysis completed by Dustin Boler, Ph.D. and Carthage’s director of research, we found that only about 6.7% of sows were “average.” As mentioned, gilts we know are consuming less, but even within your multiparity sows, you will have variation with some eating less, some eating at and some eating more than the average intake. One example is that in a study we found 19% of the population wasn’t meeting the base requirements for lysine due to feed intake variation.

Less than 7% of the population meeting the average formulated description and general variation from animal to animal are factors we have to take into consideration when we are feeding sows. This is one of the more difficult pieces for management and nutrition teams to decide on how to approach.

Pick your battle

At Carthage, we have a long history of doing sow research. It's valuable to be able to do it in a full-size, commercial barn setting to see which feeding strategies have shown the best results.

“We know that most sow farms can only feed one lactation diet,” says Casey Neill, Carthage nutritionist, “so we have to decide which group you target to feed to. Do you go with the ‘average’ that isn’t really the average? Or do you feed specific to a certain parity or age?”

We have been researching this very question with a focus on amino acids. “Our research has shown that increasing amino acids in the lactation diet is responsible for better milk production, which correlates with a higher weaning weight of those baby pigs and a better breed back in your sows,” notes Neill.

Focus on the future

Because of this research, and knowing that we can’t get all the parities to eat the same, we are trying out feeding the younger animal that has the lower feed intake, because that is around 30% of the population and the future of the herd. This meant increasing the percentage of amino acids to accommodate the intake of the first lactation gilts.

“So far, we have seen very positive results in keeping those animals producing, maintaining body condition and, therefore, good breed-back rates and weaning heavier pigs,” says Neill.

Next steps

With these positive results in research and customer experiences, we are happy with the progress but still have more questions to explore.

Closing thoughts

It takes more than nutrition, see additional gilt management wisdom from Claire LeFevre, an associate veterinarian at Carthage Veterinary Service. We still have much research and learning to do to answer outstanding questions on variation management, this research though is a step in the right direction for discovering more answers around better sow nutrition.