The COVID-19 pandemic has left many industries struggling to find and retain employees. The swine industry has historically battled labor shortage and a high turnover rate, and COVID-19 has amplified these challenges. Here are a few tips I learned for attending farrowing while working on a sow farm with labor challenges.
When sow farms are short-staffed, farrowing (especially day one) is typically the first chore that is reverted to the basics. At a bare minimum, day one care needs to include assisting farrowing sows, cross-fostering, administering any day one shots, data entry and treating sows.
The sow farm I worked on initially had the day one team doing feedline in the actively farrowing rooms. Feedline includes ensuring that every sow has feed and water, monitoring that the room environment is appropriate, and removing and recording any dead piglets. When there was only one person in day one, it was not feasible to accomplish this in a timely manner. We adjusted and implemented that the herdsman team in farrowing did feedline in the actively farrowing rooms.
With one person in day one care, I found it easiest to immediately vaginally assist and sleeve every sow that farrowed the night before or was actively farrowing. By doing this, every sow was sleeved at least once and should decrease the chance of a sow with retained piglets. I would also go through the room and topically powder any wet piglets. I noted any sows that were retained or needed treatment first thing in the morning as well. I wrote up the sow card if the sow was done farrowing with the appropriate information. I also made notes on sow observation cards for actively farrowing sows.
Make Your Time Count
Although not ideal for colostrum intake, I would often perform cross-fostering as I was assisting sows if I was the only person working in day one care. If I was taking piglets from a litter, I would choose the full-bellied piglets to foster onto another sow that needed piglets. I saved a lot of time by doing this at the same time I was assisting sows. I typically did not make small litters, and instead left the smaller piglets with their mom or euthanized if there were more piglets than teat space. If there was an additional person to help me in day one, we would wait until after all sows were sleeved to start cross-fostering to allow more time for colostrum intake.
The sow farm I worked on gave an antibiotic and oral medicine at day one. I started to give these medications as soon as the cross-fostering was done. If there is one person doing day one shots, make sure they have a pig-grabber so they aren’t tempted to step into crates to reach piglets. Once day one shots were done, I entered all of the new farrows into our data entry program. The last thing I would do each day was treat sows.
Although labor shortages are a challenge and will continue to be in the near future, prioritizing tasks in the ways I mentioned can allow one person in day one to provide sufficient care to both sows and piglets.
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