How to improve the quality of piglets? Practical breeding methods to share

Piglets have an imperfect digestive function, an underdeveloped enzyme system, and a lack of innate immunity, with poor digestion and disease resistance, making them susceptible to infections that affect their growth and development.

Choosing good breeding sows: generally speaking, piglets with a high birth weight have strong resistance and grow quickly, and this trait is highly heritable. Therefore, when selecting sows to retain, litter selection must be carried out, choosing piglets from the litter that are well developed, have many and neatly arranged teats, and a good body type for breeding use. In addition, within the same breed, large individuals among sows can better utilize the nutrients in the feed during pregnancy, ensuring the normal development of the fetuses and laying a good foundation for producing high-quality piglets.

Utilizing heterosis: the boar has a great influence on the quality of piglets, and high-quality boars can be used to improve piglet quality through crossbreeding. For the boar, choose an imported boar with a large body type, fast growth and a high lean meat rate as the breeding boar.

Strengthen feeding during the sow's pregnancy: according to the characteristics of the sow's different stages of gestation, adopt corresponding feeding methods, and ensure that the sow obtains sufficient nutrients from the diet, such as adding Huamei sow concentrate 5880#, to meet the needs of fetal growth and development, but do not make the sow too fat. In terms of management, pay attention to appropriate exercise to enhance the sow's constitution and prevent miscarriage, so that the quality of the piglets produced is relatively high.

Strengthen feeding during lactation: sow's milk is the only source of nutrition for piglets within 2 weeks after birth, and is also the main food before 30 days of age, so the sow's milk yield is extremely closely related to piglet quality. The main way to increase the sow's milk yield is to strengthen feeding management. When adding Huamei sow concentrate 5890# to lactating sows, pay attention to appropriate energy and protein levels. The digestible energy per kilogram of diet should be higher than 11.72MJ/kg, and the crude protein level should not be lower than 13%. In terms of management, feed after farrowing should go from less to more, increasing gradually, and where conditions permit, green feed can be fed once at night.

Strengthen piglet care and keep them warm: newborn piglets have thin skin and sparse back hair, and poor heat retention ability. In addition, within 24 hours after birth, piglets cannot use milk fat and milk protein oxidation to supply heat; the main heat source depends on glycogen in the body and lactose in breast milk. Therefore, piglets are liable to freeze to death, and keeping warm is one of the important measures to improve piglet quality. The suitable temperature for raising piglets is: 34-30°C at 1-3 days of age. 30-28°C at 4-7 days of age, 25-22°C at 15-30 days of age, and maintained at around 18-20%°C by 60 days of age. Especially before 10 days of age, piglets lack the ability to regulate and adapt to temperature differences, so artificial warming must be carried out.

Drink enough colostrum: newborn piglets cannot obtain innate immunity and must get it by drinking colostrum. Therefore, the earlier piglets drink colostrum, the stronger their resistance, and it also helps restore body temperature. Generally, piglets should be allowed to drink colostrum within half an hour after birth.

Timely iron supplementation: at birth, the piglet's body iron reserve is 30-50mg. A normally growing piglet needs 7-8mg of iron per head per day. Thus, by 3 weeks of age when it starts eating feed, a total of 200mg of iron is needed. However, the iron content in breast milk is very low (0.2mg~100g), and the iron piglets get from milk is far from meeting their needs. Therefore, piglets must be supplemented with iron after birth. At 3 days after birth, piglets can be given an intramuscular injection of 1-2mL of iron dextran-cobalt complex.

Early supplementary feeding: breast milk reaches its peak at 3-4 weeks and then gradually declines, and breast milk alone cannot meet the nutritional needs of piglet growth and development. At 5-7 days after birth, use roasted corn, soybeans or Huamei 5311# piglet pelleted feed, etc. to attract them to eat.

Prevent diarrhea: diarrhea is the main factor reducing piglet quality. There are many causes of diarrhea, mainly improper feeding and management and bacterial infection. The K88-K99 bivalent genetically engineered vaccine can be injected into sows 3 weeks before farrowing, with good preventive effect. In addition, the pen hygiene should also be well managed, with regular disinfection.

Reduce weaning stress: in order to reduce weaning stress, adopt the method of "drive away the sow and keep the piglets" for weaning, continue feeding with the supplementary feed for a period of time, and transfer them to other pig houses only after the piglets have fully adapted to the changes of independent living.