Common causes of death in piglets

To improve piglet survival rate is an important factor to increase piglet economic benefit. How to improve piglet survival rate requires raising personnel to strengthen management, analyze death causes and take corresponding measures timely and accurately. Although there are many causes of piglet death, the following are common in production:

crushed to death

1. Within one week after birth, piglets are prone to crushing, mainly due to:

1)Some sows are old and weak, slow to respond, obese, maternal is not strong, impatient, and the first sow has poor experience in protecting the young. In short, the worse the maternal sow, the easier it is to die and press the piglets.

2)Piglets born with congenital deficiency or weak disease, or because of cold vitality is not strong, action is not fast, even if the sow is more sensitive, because the piglets cry low hoarse, insufficient cause sow alarm, often crushed to death, or piglets because of poor nipple fixation, and competition, causing sows to change position sharply, but also easy to trample to death, trample on piglets.

3)Sows are frightened due to beating or rushing sows; litter is too long, piglets drill into the haystack, causing sows to be difficult to identify or piglets to escape; sows are too small, piglets have no room for maneuver and escape, all of which are easy to cause piglets to be crushed.

2. Take corresponding measures for the above situation

1)Strengthen the care of piglets. Sows killing piglets often occur when they lie down after eating and defecating. Therefore, they cannot leave before lying down. If they hear piglets screaming, they should be rescued quickly.

2)The piglet protection frame is installed on both sides of the piglet bed against the wall with 8~10 cm thick logs or steel bars, and the piglet protection frame is installed at a distance of 20~30 cm from the wall and the ground to prevent the sow from crushing the piglet when sleeping against the wall.

3)A piglet box is set up, and newborn piglets are put into a piglet box or basket padded with soft hay, released when feeding, and fed once every 1~2 hours within 5 days of age. Although it is time-consuming to set up a farrowing box, it can effectively prevent sows from crushing piglets.

freeze to death

Piglets born thin skin hair, body fat is very little, body temperature regulation ability is weak, cold weather is easy to freeze to death phenomenon, therefore, for piglets to create a warm environment is an effective measure of anti-freezing. The optimum environmental temperature for piglets was 30~32℃ at 1~3 days, 28~30℃ at 4~7 days, 25~28℃ at 8~30 days, 22~25℃ at 30~60 days, and 19~22℃ at 2~3 months. The heat preservation measure is to create a warm microclimate environment for piglets alone to increase the local environmental temperature around piglets.

1. Thick cushion grass

In the absence of other heating facilities, or heating facilities and want to strengthen the heating effect, should pad thick grass on the ground or piglet box, this heating method is suitable for small pig farms and farmers. However, the thickness of the mat should be appropriate. At the same time, the female piglets should be trained to defecate regularly and keep the mat dry without frequent replacement.

2. Infrared lamp

The infrared lamp is hung in a piglet box or a piglet pen with grass mat. Generally, 150~250W infrared lamp is used to control the temperature by adjusting the height from the ground. This method is simple and easy to do, not only can make the mother get the appropriate temperature, but also can prevent piglets from being pressed, but when using infrared lamps, we must pay attention to the height of the bulb, too low easy to roast piglets or sow skin, but also prone to fire.

3. Fire kang

This method is often adopted in northern areas. The kang is built on one side of the piglet insulation room. Every two adjacent pigbeds are built together. The middle partition wall is used as the fire channel of the kang. A flue with a depth of 25cm is dug underground on both sides. The bricks are paved with grass mud 4cm thick.

Of course, there are many ways to keep warm, and you should choose according to your own conditions to create a suitable environment for piglet growth.

disease

Due to poor hygiene, epidemic prevention, disinfection, feeding and other measures caused by disease, coupled with poor observation, discovery and treatment is not timely, more important because of the newborn piglet temperature regulation mechanism and innate deficiency of immunity, constitute the key to the success or failure of piglet death, piglet stage more anemia, enteritis, stiff pigs, endemic white myopathy and so on.

1, anemia

Iron deficiency anemia is easy to occur in newborn piglets. Anemia not only directly or indirectly causes piglet death, but also reduces piglet growth rate and forms cannibalism. Therefore, iron supplementation is required for piglets 2~3 days after birth. Of course, many compounds are used as iron sources, such as ferrous sulfate, ferric sulfate, ferrous chloride, ferric chloride, ferrous ammonium sulfate, ferrous gluconate, etc.

2. Zombie pigs

Piglets in lactation and weaning period feeding management and congenital deficiency, piglet skin loss luster, hair haggard, appetite, head big body small, development blocked, growth stagnation and no vitality, even cause death, produce many reasons for pig stiffness, can be divided into fetal stiffness, milk stiffness, disease stiffness and food stiffness, strengthen sow gestation period feeding management, ensure normal fetal development, prevent inbreeding, resulting in low piglet vitality; Strengthen the feeding management of nursing sows to improve the lactation quantity of sows, fix the weak piglets on the front nipples of sows when fixing the nipples, timely send the piglets without milk or milk deficiency, ensure sufficient colostrum, timely prevent and cure diseases, deworming, special care for piglets, feed high-quality protein feed, and increase high-quality green feed to supplement nutrition. In short, the pig must be given special care, otherwise it will die due to low resistance to disease, and even if it does not die, it will not eat long and waste feed.

3. Diarrhea

There are many causes of diarrhea in piglets, but no matter yellow diarrhea, white diarrhea or red diarrhea, we cannot rely solely on injection and drug infusion treatment. Comprehensive measures should be taken:

1)Before giving birth, the delivery room must be thoroughly disinfected, and the delivery room should be kept dry, warm and fresh throughout the lactation period.

2)The feed of sows should be complete, especially the green feed should be fed more to ensure sufficient vitamins, the feed should be relatively stable, and sudden changes in feed often cause changes in sow milk and cause diarrhea of piglets.

3)According to the nutritional standard for piglets to prepare complete feed, must add complex vitamin additives and growth promoters.

4. Endemic leukomyosis

Endemic leukomyosis mainly originates from the deficiency of selenium in feed, which is related to the available selenium level in soil. Prevention and avoidance of this disease can be achieved by adding selenium and vitamin E to the diet or injecting 0.1% sodium selenite saline into piglets after birth. To synthesize the above piglet diseases, corresponding technical measures should be taken:

1)Keep the floor of the pigsty dry and clean, change the bedding frequently, soak and disinfect the drinking water and food trough with lime water every day (at least once every three days).

2)Vaccination in strict accordance with immunization procedures, supplement various nutrients.

3)Early detection of illness, timely diagnosis and treatment.

4)Early feeding for piglets can train the digestive organ function of piglets and promote gastrointestinal development. At the same time, piglets learn to eat and will no longer chew things randomly, reducing the occurrence of diseases.

starving

Sows lack of milk performance in the postpartum milk shortage or no milk, piglets restless barking, follow sows to feed, the whole litter piglets generally thin, seriously affecting piglet growth and development, and even death. Mainly because sow early mating, mammary gland development is not perfect, or sow nutrition deficiency during pregnancy, resulting in sow physique emaciation and lack of milk, or sow before and after childbirth suffered from gastroenteritis, dyspepsia, to take corresponding measures for different reasons:

1. Timely breeding.

(2) Formulate feed according to the nutritional needs of sows during pregnancy, increase green feed, meet the needs of minerals and vitamins, and prevent sows from being overweight.

(3) Strengthen the feeding management of sows before and after farrowing to ensure the health of sows before and after farrowing.

Improving piglet survival rate is a complex problem in many aspects, and there are different effects on piglet survival rate according to time, place, breed, growth stage, equipment condition of pig farm and feeding management level. According to the function and nature of each link to the organism, the key is the internal cause, that is, the feeding management of crossbreeding, fetal protection, pregnant sows and suckling piglets. As long as the maternal reproductive body condition is good, the piglets get normal growth and development in the fetal period, the vitality is strong, and all kinds of nutrients needed by the piglets are supplemented in time, the survival rate of piglets can be improved.