Webinar: Optimising farrowing management in Argentina
With the support of 11 Dutch companies, Argentina’s GITAH Porcino Group organised a series of webinars to address practical challenges and solutions in the country’s pork production sector. The topic of this 3rd episode is optimising farrowing management.
This webinar was held in The Hague, the Netherlands, and was hosted by Pig Progress editor, Vincent ter Beek. Although aimed at the Argentinian market, the guest speakers are from around the world and shared their expertise from various related fields. The webinar has Spanish subtitles.
Quality flooring
Reneé Weernink, Nooyen sales director for the American continent, was the first speaker. In his presentation, Weernink introduced Nooyen, which was started by 6 brothers and now has 4,500 sow farms with 60,000 fattening pigs. The company also manages its own sales and the distribution of its meat.
Weernink spoke about the importance of quality, coated flooring and the impact this has not only on the health, welfare and well-being of the pigs, but on hygiene and smell, as well as from a safety perspective in terms of the risk of a fire.
Optimal climate in the barn
The next speaker was Micha Vosse, general manager of Hotraco Agri Latin America. He presented on the importance of creating an optimal climate in the pig house, and emphasized how a controller, or an automated system, can manage all these elements and keep the farmer informed and updated.
In a pig house, ventilation, temperature, relative humidity, water, feed, the weight of the piglets and pigs, and lighting are all parameters that are very important to control, monitor and maintain at optimal levels, he said.
The importance of data
An expert in the field of developing smart farming solutions for dairy and swine farms is Harjan Westerman, sales account manager pig solutions at Nedap. He highlighted the significance of data in contributing to transparency in the pork supply chains. Smart data can, amoungst many other things, be used to determine the performance of the pigs, manage the performance of the sows, and manage finisher pigs in large groups.
Optimal hygiene to improve farrowing results
The last speaker to present was Robert Whittington, manager Latin America MS Schippers, who stressed the importance of clean, dry stalls, without which the risk of illness and mortality increases and productivity decreases. He also touched on vehicle hygiene to avoid cross-contamination, and the proper cleaning of sows before farrowing. He summarised the most important aspects when talking about hygiene and the areas to focus on during the process of disinfection.
Water is the most important nutrient for the pigs and makes up 70% of what the animal consumes. It is critical for all the animals that the water system is as clean as possible and that the quality of the water is as high as possible.
Following the presentations, a roundtable discussion between the guest speakers was held.
