Farrowing management + the young piglet Flashcards
What are main aims during farrowing?
- Increase number of live pigs weaned
- More even litters
- Increase average weaning weight
- Avoid excessive loss of sow condition
What are the sows pre-farrowing signs?
- Nesting behaviour
- Discomfort
- Stressful
- ↓ appetite
- Milk appearance
- Piglets at least every 20 mins during farrowing
- usually 10 mins
What are pre-farrowing preperations?
- Correct feeding during dry period
- Accurate records - doesn’t need to be in farrowing house longer than needed
- Cleaning + disinfection of farrowing house
When cleaning + disinfecting, what need to be done?
- Remove animals, dust, faeces, grease between batches
- Clean down, pre-soak, detergent use, pressure wash, disinfect
- DRY!!!!!
What can cause dystocia? How is it diagnosed?
- Obstruction
- Inertia
- Dx = if seen straining / over 30min and no piglet
What type of inertia is more common? What are the causes?
- Primary = uncommon - over-conditioned, lack of muscular tone, hypocalcaemia, illness
- Secondary = common - exhaustion, dehydration, excessive heat, prolonged obstruction
What can cause foetal dystocia?
- Coiled uterus = backup of fetuses
- Oversized if small litter number
- Congenital abnormalities
- Putrefying dead foetus
- Malpresentation
What are other point of farrowing problems?
- Uterine twist
- Operator induced - uterine ruptures
- Collapsed / narrow pelvis
- Everted bladder / vaginal prolapse
- Oxytocin overdose
How much oxytocin to give sow?
- max 0.5ml
What to do if retained foetus / membrane?
- Penicillin
- NSAIDs
What are alternatives to caesareans?
- Euthanasia
- Hysterectomy
What are post-farrowing complications?
- Prolapses
- rectal - can replace if fresh, otherwise will resolve with time
- vaginal - often able to work through if assisting
- uterine - ENORMOUS - difficult to replace - often EUTHANASIA
What are problems with milking?
- Agalactia vs mastitis - (all glands vs individual glands)
- Unavailability - behaviour / disease
- Piglets unable to obtain milk
- Sows not having enough energy before farrowing
What is MMA syndrome?
- Mastitis
- Metritis
- Agalactia
What is different about sow milking?
- Milk is only let down at certain periods - intermittent milk let down
What are other sow issues?
- Not feeding enough - ad lib
- Savaging
- Abandonment / doubling up in arcs
- Teat damage
- Stress
What is savaging?
Gilts pain response to dystocia - will kill piglets as it is the first thing they see and associate with pain
* Give azaperone (sedation) + NSAIDs
What are struggles of piglets?
- Long distance to travel
- Cold - temp, draughts, flooring
- Hunger
- Disease pressure
What is significant of piglets that die?
- 30% of piglets that die have no milk in stomach = management issues
What are routine procedures of piglets?
- Iron injections
- Tagging / notching / tattooing
- Tail docking
- Teeth reduction
- Injections - vaccines / treatments
- Oral treatments - coccidiostat
What are causes of piglet scour?
- Non infectious = milk scour - nutritional
- Viral = Rotavirus, PED/TGE, PRRSV
- Bacterial = E.coli, Clostridium perfringens
- Parasitic = Isospora suis, Cryptosporidosis, Strongyloides
Scour is usually triggered by another factor, what are these?
- Environment - cold draughts
- Hygiene
- Lack of colostrum
- Fostering
What is milk scour?
- Either very early on or from 3weeks old.
- GIT overload to large intestines
- Self limiting
- Nutritional scour = creep feed gut mismatch
What is seen with viral scour?
- Hugely profuse amounts of watery scour – very early onset
- Small intestinal villous atrophy
- Mortality is related to dehydration
- Secondary bacterial infection common
- Difficult to treat directly
How is rotavirus scouring treated?
- Hydration support
- Hygiene improvements
- Reduced chilling
- Immune boost
When is E.coli scour seen?
- Usually within first week
- Gilt litters predisposed
- More common indoors, but chilled arcs predisposed
- Watery diarrhoea with bits
How is E.coli scour treated?
- Hydration
- Antibiotics
- Vaccinate breeding herd
What clostridium causes scour in piglets + sudden death
- Clostridium perfringens type C
- produces B toxin
- usually outdoors
- sudden death within 24hr due to acute haemorrhagic enteritis
- Should vaccinate
What other clostridium affewct piglets?
- Clostridium perfringens type A - produce a & B2 toxins
- pasty scour + poor growth
- Vaccinate
When does cocci affect piglets?
- 10-21days of age - isospora suis
- No Tx
- Resolves at weaning - but impact weaning weight
- Oral toltrazuril given from 4 days of age to resolve clinical impact
What is the most common nervous disease?
- Bacterial meningitis
also common =
- Streptococcus suis
- E.coli
- Glaesserella parasuis
What are clinical signs of meninitis? Tx? control?
- CS = nystagmus, opisthotonus, pyrexia, convulsions + sudden death
- Tx = reduce swollen brain = steroid + Ab systemically + hydration
- Control = good hygiene + colostrum
What are congenital tremors of piglets?
- A1 – cerebellar atrophy – CSF infection
- A2 – cerebellar atrophy and hypomyelinogenesis
– pestivirus infection - A3 – Landrace inherited to male piglets
- A4 – Saddleback recessive inherited defect
- A5 – cerebellar atrophy and hypomyelinogenesis –
organophosphate effect
What can cause lameness in piglets?
- Joint ill
- Splayleg
- Injuries from sow / environment
What are congenital abnormalities of piglets?
- Cleft palate
- Epitheliogenesis imperfecta
- Hydrocephalus
- Contracted tendons
- Monsters
