Does precision feeding sows during lactation pencil out? Mike Tokach, University Distinguished Professor and Extension specialist at Kansas State University, says that’s an important question for producers to consider when it comes to feeding sows.
“Getting nutrients into the sow to support milk production and reduce body weight loss during lactation is critical,” Tokach says. “However we can get nutrients in front of that sow and into the sow is critically important.”
Although some sows will eat more than they need during lactation, Tokach says that’s the minority today. For most producers, their focus is making sure they have fresh feed in front of the sows so they can eat whenever they want to maximize consumption.
“We don’t want to forget about the basics and making sure that we have the nutrients in front of the sow so that she can meet her requirements,” he says.
When it comes to precision feeding a sow, Tokach says it’s important to know how much the sow is eating, her level of milk production, how many pigs she is nursing, and approximately what the litter gained compared to previous groups on the farm.
“This allows the producer to know how much milk she’s producing per day based on her litter size, and that tells us the amino acids she needs,” he says. “And then, based on her level of feed intake, we can adjust what diet we need to get the right percentage lysine or the right percentage of each of the amino acids in the diet to be able to blend those together to meet her requirements.”
Precision Feeding Results
K-State has been studying the use of precision feeding during lactation for years. Mikayla Spinler, a graduate research assistant at K-State, has recently led two studies at the K-State Research Farm and a large field study at Brenneman Pork. Both the sites had Gestal feeding systems that allowed Spinler to conduct studies comparing various diets.
In the first trial, Spinler used three different models. The first model included a single diet fed all the way through, like most farms feed today. The second model was based on exactly what the NRC says sows need. The third model fed the sows exactly like the European model, INRA, says sows need fed.
“Long story short, both the NRC model and INRA model underfed lysine to the sows by about 20%,” Tokach explains.
In the second study, Spinler used the NRC model and increased its target by 20%. With that approach, the sows had the same performance whether they had one single diet or the NRC model + 20% tailored to their individual needs.
In the third trial at Brenneman Pork, Spinler wanted to find out if she could achieve the same results with a large number of sows on a commercial swine farm. Tokach says she found the same thing as her second study.
“If you knew the number of piglets the sow was nursing and could target your amino acids to the litter size according to their previous feed intakes, we could achieve the same level of performance as sows that were fed one single diet,” he says. “However, this approach reduced the feed cost of the sow and reduced nutrient excretion.”
In short, they realized they could achieve the same performance with fewer nutrients because they were targeting exactly what the sow needs on a daily basis.
“Precision feeding allows you to reduce the feed cost and reduce nitrogen and phosphorus excretion because we’re not overfeeding the diet to the sows that don’t need it,” he says.
Targeted Nutrition
In the trial that Spinler completed, the sows fed the individual diet that met the needs of all the sows, consumed about 80 grams of lysine per day. The precision fed sows consumed just over 60 grams of lysine per day.
“When you think about that difference and the fact that they had the same performance, the difference is basically wastage of nutrients,” he says. “That reduction in cost is one of the big advantages. For many producers, nitrogen excretion and phosphorus excretion are not as critical as it is for some of the European producers where nitrogen and phosphorus excretion limits the number of sows they can have on the land.”
He also notes that precision feeding allows producers to factor in the effect of parity. First parity sows eat about 20% less feed than an older parity sow. Although first parity sows produce a little less milk, he points out that it’s not that much less. Because of this, they need a higher nutrient-dense diet in most situations than an older parity sow for milk production.
“A first parity sow is still depositing a lot of protein,” Tokach says. “She’s still growing towards her mature body size and needs more amino acids for that protein deposition that she’s doing while she’s producing milk.”
Is It Worth the Cost?
The industry has experienced quite an evolution in how sows are fed, Tokach points out.
“Most of us grew up feeding sows by hand and we still have some farms that do that today,” he says. “Then we evolved into more simplified ways of automating sow feeding. A lot of farms still have those very simple methods today. Then it moved to systems where the sow could call for her own feed. Precision feeding now uses a computerized system that will provide a targeted amount of total feed that sows can be fed at any one time.”
Some of these electronic feeding systems can blend two diets together. As the sow progresses through lactation, these systems allow producers to use more of one diet and less of the other to match the curve to meet those amino acid requirements as they change each day during lactation. Tokach says these systems can be very complex and sophisticated, or very simple in terms of the curve set up for the sows.
Ultimately, producers evaluating new construction or planning renovations to lactation rooms should determine the new technology cost and the return-on-investment timeframe, he advises.
“Your savings on the feed cost has to pay for the equipment to be able to do this,” Tokach adds.
On-farm employees must be trained and develop needed skills of utilizing the lactation feeding technology equipment to fully capture the benefits of more accurate feeding of all females in the herd.
“We’re on the front side of the technology, even the companies that have equipment to allow you to blend diets today will tell you that they are working on simplifying the process,” he says. “Work with the equipment manufacturer to make sure they have a process that’s going to work for you on your operation in terms of being simple enough to operate it and adjust the diets. Right now, it takes nutritionist involvement to make those adjustments.”
In the future, he envisions a built-in system, where somebody will provide a curve that goes into that piece of equipment, and then producers will adjust it based on the litter size and the parity of the sow.
“We do have people using computerized equipment to limit the amount of feed that a sow can eat in any period in the day to try to reduce wastage,” Tokach says. “But when we talk about blending different diets through precision feeding, we need to continue to have advancements to make that work work on a daily basis at the farm level.”
