Good service facilities help boost numbers

Good service facilities and staff are key to good service management which, in turn, will help increase both farrowing rate and numbers born.

Well-designed service areas help stockmen manage heat detection and artificial insemination (AI) effectively. The service area should be nice and quiet and laid out in a way that aids accurate heat detection and stimulation, without interference from other sows.

It can be more difficult to manage service on an outdoor unit, as batch systems require more than 100 sows to be checked and served. So a producer in East Anglia is trying out a newly developed ‘AI pod’ for outdoor units, as part of one of our BPEX field trials.

The pod has individual AI stalls for sows and gilts, on either side of the boar pens. So far, it is helping sows stay calmer and it is much easier to differentiate whether sows are showing standing heat or are not in heat, so it should mean that timing of service is more accurate. We will know more soon about its effects on numbers born.

For more information on service management, download Action for Productivity factsheets numbers 29, 30 and 31 from www.bpex.org.uk/2TS/breeding/