Help with prepuce and navel sucking
If prepuce and navel sucking is a problem in your clients' herds, you
may want to ask the following questions:
- Do the pigs travel to the nursery (trucking) or are they at the same
site?
- What is the protocol for pigs placed? How is feed delivered to pigs?
- What is the water source?
We stress to our personnel that they need to aggressively feed and water
pigs newly placed in the nursery. For instance, we place small bits of paper
or cardboard in the nipple of nipple waterers to slow the drip of water.
The paper will eventually dissolve, and this seems to help the pigs recognize
where the water source is. We have also used small pan waterers underneath
the nipples in pens of small pigs to provide additional help finding the
water source.
For feeding, we place mats by the feeders and provide a prestarter diet
for at least the first 3-7 days after pigs are placed in the nursery. Diets
are adjusted by weight and are fed accordingly. We will feed the pigs on
the mats up to 4 times daily to get pigs on feed. For smaller pigs, we will
make a small amount of gruel in a pan to help encourage better appetites.
We make the gruel fresh 3-4 times a day and rinse the pans between each
feeding. Feedings of gruel are tapered down each day until pigs are eating
out of their feeders.
This protocol does work well in both two- and three-site production systems.
While this does not eliminate the prepuce/navel sucking, it does reduce
it to a much more manageable level.
--submitted by Dr. Lisa Becton, Princeton, Missouri
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