Sarah Mikesell, from LifeStart Swine, interviews Dr. Ruben Decaluwe, the Global Technical Manager of Swine Young Animal Feed at Trouw Nutrition. Dr. Decaluwe is based in Belgium. Prior to working with Trouw Nutrition, his PhD research was focused on colostrum production.
The LifeStart concept is based on the idea that a strong start leads to a strong finish. But getting from the nursery to the finishing barn isn't always easy.
Let's start with a short overview of LifeStart.
I try to describe LifeStart by saying, “a good start is half the battle won.” LifeStart is not a single moment in a piglet’s life but rather a critical period of time. If we can create an optimal situation for piglets during that specific period, it leads to a better payoff during the grow-finish phase. You could compare it to raising a child, if raised in a stable household with a good education and physical development, then the child will have an increased chance for a healthy and stable adult life. Of course, with piglets the parameters are completely different. The period we're talking about with LifeStart is quite long - it's from conception until six weeks of life, which is about 50% of its total lifetime.
The main parameter for the piglet is body weight at six weeks of life. Research shows that if piglets have one kilogram of extra body weight at six weeks of life, it leads to two to three kilograms of extra slaughter weight, which means three to four days earlier to slaughter. This can have a huge economic impact across a herd, depending on local market prices and feed costs.
In an ideal world, all the piglets would reach their maximum potential at six weeks of age, but the reality is that there are many hurdles along the way that compromise or lower a piglet’s potential performance. Specifically, there are two major transition periods where things can go wrong. The first is around farrowing, which we describe as the sow peripartal syndrome. The second is around weaning, which we call the piglet periweaning syndrome.
Weaning is such a critical time, what kind of stressors is the piglet experiencing?
A lot can go wrong during weaning, and it’s important to understand that everything is interconnected with each other. A picture of the periweaning syndrome shows a roadmap that describes all the potential challenges and risk factors that a piglet can face around weaning. The map can initially be scary and overwhelming because it shows a lot of boxes with arrows and everything is connected, but that's the key message – it’s all connected.
If you're facing a specific challenge, keep an open mind. Don't say, “I'm having diarrhea,” so this is the cause. Because the cause is quite often multifactorial, so the solution may be quite different from what you originally thought. The commonality of these weaning challenges is that they all lead to production losses. That's quite clear, but how they do it that can be very variable. For example, postweaning mortality, edema, wastage disease and streptococcus all lead to production losses and inefficient growths gains. The difficulty is that the origin of these challenges is rarely straightforward and is highly variable between farms.
Another example is postweaning diarrhea. We all know that it’s caused by an E. coli bacterium. We could say, “okay, we have postweaning diarrhea, so let's medicate and move on to the next batch.” What typically will happen is that you’ll see the same thing in the next batch because you're only treating the symptoms. However, what you really need to understand is why on this specific farm or in this specific situation does E. coli result into post weaning diarrhea? What are the triggering factors and the on-farm risk factors making it a problem? By understanding these underlying factors, we can solve the trigger parameters so the problem can be eliminated, or we can at least manage it in a better way.
It’s important to note that the challenges around weaning may have their origin at the moments around weaning, but sometimes the seeds of the problems were planted weeks and weeks before. Therefore, we need to look at the complete life period and not look only at the most recent few weeks.
What are some practical solutions to reduce the impact of piglet periweaning syndrome?
The key message of the piglet periweaning syndrome is that everything is connected. For example, let's take growth retardation which quite clearly results in production losses. Losses can be caused by higher treatments, lower final body weights, potential loss of efficiencies, and increased feed costs per kilogram gain. But what does growth retardation cost an operation? There are three main categories to consider: health management, farm management and feed management. These are also interconnected with each other.
Health management. A piglet that is facing strep suis or postweaning diarrhea will suffer and experience growth retardation. But there are also subclinical health challenges that you don't see that make the piglets sick and lead to growth retardation. However, if you don't measure these parameters and rate of gain, you’ll never know what potential performance you are losing.
Farm management. Herd health has a lot to do with the overall health status of the farm. Can we improve or work on biosecurity and/or infection pressure on-farm or at the pig level? Can we develop a vaccination program to improve the piglet’s immune status? For example, if you have good colostrum intake, it will reduce the immunity gap that is typically occurring around weaning, making your piglets more resilient and better able to cope with everything that is going on during weaning. They will also be more resilient to the many pathogens and health challenges that they may face. Another example is weaning age. Weaning at a later age offers the piglet more resiliency to cope with different health challenges. Weaning later can also create other difficulties, so there can be tradeoffs. Another example is climate control - if it's too warm or if it's too cold, that will have an impact on performance because pigs will face difficulties trying to convert the energy and protein you are providing to them into pork and muscle production. Also, poor ventilation can induce health challenges because it can cause a cold or influence different respiratory diseases. And let's not forget about genetics, people often ask what’s the best breed to work with. My response is always that there is no best breed in the industry. Find the best breed for you as a farmer and love the breed you work with.
Feed management. There are many feed-related factors that can cause growth retardation. It could be suboptimal access to high quality feed or water. If there's insufficient feeder spaces, that could lead to growth retardation. Feed composition is also very important. Well balanced feeds with good nutritional insights are critical to maximize the growth potential of animals. Quality feed also plays a role in keeping infection pressure low in the gut of the animal.
An important component to solving issues at weaning is using the specialization that each member of your team brings, including you, your veterinarian and your nutritionist. Invite them to sit around the table with you and develop a plan that will work best for your farm and your way of working. Do this with trusted and knowledgeable partners because that gives you the highest chance for successful production.
