Steps to the recovery for sick pigs
Managing sick or injured pigs can be challenging, but also highly rewarding.
It’s a factor to consider when thinking about feed efficiency, because rearing to finisher diets aren’t getting any cheaper.
These animals need dedicated facilities, appropriate nutrition and good nursing and treatment. Your farm health plans should already address these areas, but it’s never a bad idea to review your recovery pen management, facilities and success rate.
Let’s look at a few of these areas in a little more detail.
Identification – Giving pigs that need to be moved into a recovery pen a consecutively numbered tag is the best way not only to trace their progress in the recovery area, but to more easily identify them for treatment, recording and returning to the mainstream. This makes for easier decisions when choosing the appropriate sale weight and timescale.
Accommodation – Provide the best you can, to give sick pigs every chance to recover. A comfortable, clean, dry, warm and draught-free environment is vital, as is a stringent biosecurity policy to minimise the risk of disease spreading to other pigs.
Aim to operate on an all-in all-out basis, whereby only a few pigs are kept in each recovery pen at any one time. Ideally, there should be no more than five or six pigs in a recovery pen and no more than a three-week age range between animals. This will help sick pigs to feel more comfortable and less stressed, and reduce the risk of cross-transmission. It will also make it easier for the stockperson who is looking after the animals to access and appropriately attend to them.
Care – The person responsible for the recovery pens (and there should be a specific member of staff dedicated to this area) should ideally have formal vet and med training, either from the unit vet or through an external course. In addition to this training, it’s important that these members of the team have a real passion and enthusiasm for caring for and treating sick pigs, in addition to good pig husbandry skills and knowledge. These stockpeople must also be given sufficient time to check and treat any sick pigs at least twice a day.
Recovery – Once sick pigs have recovered, they should be returned to the main herd and streamed appropriately. It’s important to be realistic about the prospects of any unwell or injured pigs. Not all pigs will be able to recover, for example those with blind anuses or that are severely lame; in these instances, the most appropriate course of action is likely to be euthanasia and your vet will be able to advise.
If you’d like to discuss anything covered in this article in more detail, or you’d like to find out more about the services AHDB can offer, get in touch.
Angela Cliff, Knowledge Exchange Manager, AHDB Pork
