Better Pork - December 2006

Eye On Europe

Individual feeding for weaners boosts daily weight gain by 54 grams

by NORMAN DUNN

In standard rearing systems, there’s not much feeding space for young hogs when they leave the farrowing pen. The usual animal-to-feeding space ratio is 4:1 up to 8:1 and sometimes even greater. Professor Steffen Hoy of the University of Giessen in Germany reckoned that such conditions, with young hogs having to continually struggle for feeding space, leads to animals eating less than they really require with resulting energy deficiency and less than optimum performance.

A trial was set up to see the difference in piglet performance if a system was devised for feeding post-weaning which simulated the 1:1 situation. A long, double-sided trough was designed with a dry-feed hopper above. Water supply into the troughs is regulated so that a constant level is ensured.

Each feeding space has a triangular plate attached to the bottom of the hopper and angled towards the feeding pigs. When a pig nudges this plate with its nose, a predetermined amount of dry feed falls into the water, producing a wet mash. Immediately post-weaning, the amount of dry feed released at each nudge was reduced to simulate the “little and often” situation when feeding on a 1:1 basis. Within two weeks, rationing was stepped up until it represented ad lib feeding.

Five repeat trials with a total of 200 piglets indicated that piglets on this so-called “tipp-feeder” system in a standard heated stall with slatted floor gained weight much faster and were generally more healthy when compared with piglets in the same conditions but with a conventional wet mash feeder with limited feeder access. Over a 37-day post-weaning period, the tipp-feeder piglets returned an average daily liveweight gain (dlwg) of 468 grams, 26 grams more than the control animals’ performance. In fact, in the last two feeding trials the average dlwg advantage for the tip-feeder piglets was 51 and 54 grams. Another important point: the young pigs on the tipp-feeder system were more uniform in size and weight at the end of the trial with a variation coefficient of 20.7 per cent compared with 23.8 per cent.

Now, livestock equipment manufacturer Big Dutchman has taken over development of the new feeding system and will be presenting a version with automatic filling and ration metering at the EuroTier exhibition this November in Germany. BP