A comprehensive summary of pig farming experience, practical tips for the breeding process
1. About tail biting
The author raises over 30 sows and has been farming pigs for more than ten years. Below are a few small methods I have summarized from my breeding process. I am now sharing them with everyone, hoping they can be of help to pig friends troubled by this issue. As everyone knows, even if pigs have their tails docked, tail biting still happens from time to time. My method: an appropriate amount of asphalt set aside, an appropriate amount of diesel set aside, an appropriate amount of crushed Tianying chili powder set aside. Put the asphalt in a container and melt it over a fire, add the diesel and Tianying chili powder and mix well. Before the asphalt solidifies, dip the mixture onto the tail of the bitten pig. In this way, the unusual smell of the diesel plus the spiciness of the Tianying chili will make the tail-biting pig gaze at the tail and sigh helplessly.
2. About merging sows into the same pen This method is suitable for pig friends who urgently need the pen First use thin iron wire and No. 8 galvanized wire to weave a pig-muzzle-shaped harness and set it aside. Drive the two sows to be merged into one pen. After the stronger and weaker ones are distinguished (this is the key), put the pre-prepared harness on the stronger one's mouth and secure it well, so it cannot bite the other pig, and it will keep shaking its head and rubbing on the ground with no time left to fight. This method is suitable for pig friends who do not urgently need the pen Separate the middle of a large pen with an iron fence (this is the key), and drive the two sows to be merged into the two small pens on either side of the iron fence. Let them get familiar with each other inside for 4-5 days, then merge them together. They will then be like old acquaintances, neither fighting nor bickering. I have just such a "unity and friendship pen."
3. Clever cleaning of the pig pen floor after fattening pigs are marketed After fattening pigs are marketed, the thick layer of manure crust on the floor of the empty pen is the most troublesome (pig friends who flush the pen with water daily and have fully slatted floors in the fattening house may not have this problem). Sometimes just one pen leaves you gritting your teeth and dripping with sweat. My approach is: 1-2 days before the fattening pigs are marketed, splash water on the pig house floor, then put in some balls, empty beverage bottles and other playthings. Using the pigs' desire to explore, let them compete for the toys, and with stepping, rooting and turning over plus the soaking effect of the water (if the manure crust is too thick, splash water several more times), the manure crust on the floor will quickly be loosened, and then you can just shovel it away with a flat shovel. This saves time and effort. Everyone might as well give it a try.
4. A little experience on treating sudden neurological symptoms in weaned piglets Weaned piglets sometimes suddenly show symptoms such as limb paralysis and convulsions. For pigs with such neurological symptoms, it is not easy to determine on site whether it is pseudorabies, streptococcosis, edema disease, listeriosis or other diseases that can cause neurological symptoms, so drugs can only be used based on experience. The common treatment method is symptomatic treatment: sulfadiazine sodium, diclofenac, amikacin, pefloxacin mesylate, etc. The treatment effect is generally ordinary and the mortality rate is very high. In practice, for pigs whose neurological symptoms are not easy to distinguish by cause, I use antibiotics for anti-inflammatory treatment. The formula is: ceftriaxone sodium 10 mg/kg body weight + astragalus polysaccharide 0.2 ml/kg body weight + dexamethasone 5 mg (the human-use 1 ml 5 mg), inject once. In general, improvement appears within 6-12 hours or the pig recovers to the same condition as a healthy pig, and then the next day inject the above drugs once more for maintenance. Before finding some relatively effective methods, you might as well try this treatment method.
5. Sows farrowing during the day Many sows farrow at night, which brings a lot of inconvenience to management. Cloprostenol sodium can achieve the purpose of synchronized farrowing, but when to inject and at which site to inject are very key issues. The cloprostenol sodium instructions say to use intramuscular injection, but the injection time is not specified. However, practice has proved that the effect is indeed not very ideal. According to my own practice, the injection time should be controlled at 6 p.m., and the best injection site is subcutaneous injection at the inner vulva of the sow. 98% can farrow the next day! Calculate the time yourself; generally farrowing occurs twenty hours after injection. Injection site: beside the sow's vulva, dosage one milliliter (this site can reduce the dosage) and it takes effect quickly.
6. Reasons affecting semen quality I learned from the people doing artificial insemination: after a boar has a febrile disease, it is generally best not to breed within one month, because within one month after the boar has a fever, sperm motility is less than 30%. This has a certain relationship with semen maturation. About 8 weeks or so.
7. Piglets start diarrhea three days after birth Piglets start diarrhea three days after birth, yellow watery stools, and within one week the whole litter of piglets dies one after another. Using anti-diarrheal drugs such as piglet Guonailing, ligejing, colistin sulfate, framycetin, and Chuanshuning was ineffective. I heard a friend say: 20-30 days before farrowing, inject the sow with 50 doses of swine fever vaccine for immunization, and it is effective. With a try-it-and-see attitude, I gave sows 20 days before farrowing 50 doses/head of swine fever vaccine, diluted with 1 bottle of 10 ml levamisole. As a result, the piglets born indeed no longer had diarrhea, and the mortality rate was also very small.
8. Injecting fattening pigs We once required that pigs below the nursery stage be picked up when injected, and that replacement pigs be restrained when injected, but how can injections for fattening pigs in the intermediate stage both ensure injection effectiveness and save time? It is unrealistic to restrain fattening pigs like replacement pigs, because the number is too large and it would cost too much labor; and if you use flying needles, it often causes some pigs' injections to fail or the effect to be unsatisfactory, so finding an operable method is very necessary. In production, we handle it like this: in a small pen, several keepers use an iron railing to squeeze the pigs into a corner or against the side. Because when pigs are squeezed together they are not easy to move, especially the pig heads all have to be raised, making it easy to secure the site for injection; larger nursery pigs can also be handled this way.
9. Supplemental feeding for suckling piglets Books keep emphasizing the benefits of supplemental feeding during the suckling period of piglets, but it often happens that piglets still do not know how to eat feed after weaning, thereby causing post-weaning diarrhea and serious weight loss. This is because supplemental feeding during the suckling piglet stage was not done properly. In production, we have summarized the following supplemental feeding methods for reference: 1. Cobblestone method: place a few washed cobblestones in the piglets' creep feeder. Because piglets have exploratory behavior and are interested in foreign objects, they will go root at the cobblestones and unknowingly eat feed; in pig farms where cobblestones are hard to find, washed penicillin bottles are also used as substitutes, and they also have a certain effect. 2. Hanging bottle method: hang a plastic bottle of a special color above the creep feeder. When piglets root at the bottle, they will smell the odor of the feed and develop a desire to eat. 3. Feed-smearing method: smearing feed into the piglets' mouths is the most effective among existing methods; the simplest way to smear feed is, when the piglets are sleeping, the keeper gently walks over, uses one hand to open the pig's mouth, and uses a finger of the other hand dipped in paste-like feed to smear it into the pig's mouth; when smearing feed, it is not necessary to smear all the pigs, just two to three in a litter, and do not wake the piglets when smearing; this operation does not take much effort and is easy for keepers to accept.