Podcast: Practical ways to prevent pig crushing

26-05-2021 | | |
Podcast: Practical ways to prevent pig crushing
Podcast: Practical ways to prevent pig crushing

This 20th edition of the Real P3 podcast talks to the hosts of a new Facebook Live podcast called Porcast. This episode, while lots of fun, takes a closer and more serious look at pig crushing.

The Real P3 podcast series is an initiative where pork professionals from around the world are interviewed about challenges and solutions in their day-to-day work. In this episode, Dr Casey Bradley speaks to the hosts of Porcast, who are swine nutritionists, Jean-Philippe Martineau, and pork producer, Louis-Philippe Roy, from Quebec, Canada.

These close friends are passionate about pig production and nutrition and do a lot of research and conduct many interviews and live videos in both French and English, discussing the different techniques and challenges in pork production systems while offering some excellent advice.

Protecting the piglets

About 50% of mortality can be attributed to pig crushing, and the partners have experimented with the repositioning of the heat lamp, air flow, and the use of plastic boards between the feeder and the crate to attract the piglet into that space to protect them. “When you walk through the farrowing room, all piglets need to be protected in that zone, or drinking milk,” they say, noting that in the last batch, about 4 piglets per 40 sows crushed.

The pair have a lot of practical advice to share, and note a few simple “keys to success”, including simply getting someone to watch the sow and the piglets to make sure that the piglets are safe. “We feel it is very necessary to have someone at all times in the sow barn. A ratio we could recommend is 1 per 60 or 1 per 70 sows.”

In the previous weeks, Pig Progress published earlier episodes of the Real P3 podcast series:

Kinsley
Natalie Kinsley Freelance journalist



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