Nick Butler from Elanco and I visited a
south-west unit to speak to farm staff about the results of their Full Value
Pig project trial – which involved selecting and tagging 100 piglets at birth
then weighing them at every stage until slaughter.
It’s a valuable exercise which helps
pinpoint any stages where there is variation in pig performance so that
targeted changes can be made to help improve growth.
Staff were interested to hear the results
and suggested a few management practices that might help reduce variation. The
main source of variation in the herd was immediately post weaning and the staff
are now thinking of different ways of addressing this including:
- better sorting of pigs
- one person taking full responsibility of weaner pigs
- trialling a different creep feed
Click here to see photos of Nick on farm
tagging and weighing pigs.
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