What is the definition of success in a gilt development program?
“A simple way to persuade swine professionals about the importance of reaching excellence when managing and feeding gilts is the reminder that sows with remarkable lifetime performance certainly are a consequence of a successful gilt development program,” explained Jamil Faccin, post-doctoral researcher in applied swine nutrition at Kansas State University, during his presentation at the 2023 Leman Swine Conference.
Proper gilt development can reduce culling rates and mortality, increase longevity, result in more mature sows that have greater immunity, maximize mammary gland development and increase colostrum and milk production. Several management strategies are involved in that, and nutrition and feeding practices are part of it, Faccin points out.
He shared five key feeding strategies to achieve success with gilts.
1. Vitamins and minerals
Add more phosphorous to a gilt development diet than you would for terminal lines, he said. Consider organic or chelated trace mineral sources, and add extra choline, pyridoxine, folic acid and biotin.
“Phosphorus recommendation levels for bone mineralization are approximately 8% higher than for growth performance. Organic trace mineral supplementation can reduce osteochondrosis incidence. The extra vitamins are involved in reproductive functions and often not included in finishing pig premixes,” Faccin said.
2. Mammary development
From 90 days of age to puberty, do not restrict energy intake too much. Avoid overfeeding gilts in late gestation as overfeeding during this time period will deposit more fat in mammary glands, reducing colostrum and milk production.
3. Fast-growing
Restrict growth of gilts prior to breeding when gilts are being bred over 350 lb. He encouraged controlling gilts’ growth rate from 100 to 200 days of age to avoid gilts becoming too heavy too fast. Decreasing the energy content of the diet from 13% to 25%, or 10% to 20% the Lys:Cal can slow growth without affecting reproductive performance. However, it can delay puberty.
“Review diet formulas to make sure it does not have any ingredients/inclusions promoting faster growth. Diets with higher inclusion of fiber do not slow gilts’ growth most of the time because of their capacity to compensate with higher feed intake when fed ad libitum,” he said.
He also suggested using dry feeders with feed in meal form. Take care when reducing feeder space availability or increasing stocking density as it might stimulate aggressive interactions and ear and tail biting.
4. Flush feed
Only flush feed gilts that might not reach body weight target at breeding, Faccin advised. Flush feeding only improves reproductive outputs when gilts are below the target weight for breeding.
“Flush feeding all gilts will result in an overweight herd with higher cost of body weight maintenance. Flush feeding for 7 days prior to breeding provides the greatest benefit in total born without increasing backfat,” he said.
5. Gestation
For early gestation gilts, do not feed gilts below maintenance and growth requirements and avoid feeding more than 7.5 Mcal of NE/day. For late gestation, unless body condition is low, avoid bump-feeding, he said.
“Over-conditioned gilts can have lower litter size in parity 2 and have reduced feed intake and milk production in lactation,” Faccin said. “Bump feeding improves birth weight slightly but increases stillborn rate and lowers lactation feed intake and colostrum and milk production.”
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