Farmscape for August 31, 2017

The Head Nutritionist with Gestal recommends segregating gestating sows housed in groups by parity to allow rations to be formulated to more closely meet their nutritional requirements.
Capturing Potential Through Nutrition will be discussed as part of a Sow Housing Seminar to be hosted by the Prairie Swine Centre, Swine Innovation Porc and CDPQ September 12 in Winnipeg and September 13 in Strathmore.
Dr. Hyatt Frobose, the Head Nutritionist with Gestal, recommends producers who are implementing group housing consider segregating sows by parity.
Gilts and young sows such as P-1s are still developing themselves.

Clip-Dr. Hyatt Frobose-Gestal:
They haven't reached physiological maturity and some of the nutrients that they are receiving are going into their own their own physiological development and not just the fetus of the litter.
That differs from mature sows.
Generally P-3 or higher sows, they are putting primarily their nutrients into the development of the fetus above their maintenance requirements and so there's opportunity to save some feed costs, in particular amino acid level, in older sows.
In stalls and in some pen situations we had to speak to the lowest common denominator which required us to only feed one diet to all sows and not segregate by parity and there by nutrient requirement.
An opportunity for producers as they shift to group housing and something they should consider for those still in stalls is the ability to segregate your diet provision to young sows versus old sows.
Depending on your costs requirements of your feed, 0.2 of savings on a per inventory female basis of about two to three dollars per sow within the farm per year, which is something that can easily pay for an extra bin over a short period of time.

Dr. Frobose says that's something that is definitely being considered within group housing and it's something we can consider within all sow herds regardless of stalls or group housing.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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