Podcast: Practical ways to prevent 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:

• The prologue of the podcast series;
• Episode 1: Mihaela Angheluta, Denmark;
• Episode 2: Christine Snowden, Ohio, United States;
• Episode 3: Johan Odendall, Zimbabwe;
• Episode 4: James Lamb, North Carolina, United States;
• Episode 5: Dr Wayne Johnson, China;
• Episode 6: Colin Twomey, Ireland;
• Episode 7: Paul Faris, United States;
• Episode 8: A recap of 2020;
• Episode 9: Angie Krieger, United States;
• Episode 10: Henry Silva, United States;
• Episode 11: Shannon Dierking, United States;
• Episode 12: Sanne Baden, Denmark;
• Episode 13: Brian Strobel, United States;
• Episode 14: Nii Odoi, Ghana;
• Episode 15: Pieter Beerens, the Netherlands;
• Episode 16: Steven Payne, South Africa;
• Episode 17, part 1: Caroline Gonzalez-Vega, USA;
• Episode 17, part 2: Jim Smith, USA;
• Episode 17, part 3: Ana Lucia Pozzobon de Souza, USA;
• Episode 18: Zhaohui “Edward” Yang, USA;
• Episode 19: Ron Simmons, USA.