What are the precautions before breeding a sow?
The quality of feeding and management before breeding directly affects estrus and ovulation in sows, so feeding must be strengthened before breeding to bring them to normal reproductive body condition and production performance, and to breed them at the right time. Strive for more litters and more piglets. So what should be noted before breeding a sow? Let's find out together.
1. Pay attention to the body condition of the sow after weaning
If a normal sow's lactation burden is too heavy because she has too many piglets, causing serious loss of body condition, obvious malnutrition will appear. Sows that lose too much body condition often show no estrus or delayed estrus. Even if they do come into estrus, they may ovulate very few eggs due to insufficient nutrition, and the empty pregnancy rate is relatively serious. However, if the body condition is too fat, it will also lead to fewer estrus cycles and fewer ovulations in sows, seriously affecting production performance and breeding benefits. Generally, maintaining a body condition of 70-80% is appropriate.
2. Pay attention to the health of the sow
Before breeding, pay attention to the health of the sow. If the sow suffers from endometritis and other diseases, it will also affect her estrus, or she may carry fewer piglets, and may even have miscarriages, weak piglets, or stillbirths, which brings huge economic losses to pig farming. Therefore, immunization work before breeding must be completed in order. In addition, pay attention to the boar semen; this is also quite important. If there is a problem with semen quality, it will not only affect the sow's production performance, but also bring disease and epidemics into the pig herd, and the consequences will be unimaginable.
3. Disinfection of the vulva
When breeding, be sure to use a disinfectant to disinfect the sow's vulva properly. After disinfection, rinse clean with clean water before breeding. Otherwise, bacteria, viruses, and other harmful substances will be brought into the sow's uterus, and the damage caused cannot be ignored.
4. Do not stress the pigs before and after breeding
Do not hit or scold the sow before and after breeding, to avoid frightening her and causing a stress response, which will also seriously affect conception. Breeding should also not be done under conditions of noise, moving in circles, injections, or medication, as this may at best lead to a marked reduction in piglets born, and at worst cause a return to estrus.
The above is an introduction to the precautions before breeding a sow. We hope it can help you. To learn more related knowledge, please follow us.