Mothering Abilities in Sows
Written by AKKPS Member Debra Allen of Allen's Acres
We want our pigs to have a happy, healthy, and productive life. It all starts with a sow who is sociable and a good mother but can also produce high-quality piglets that grow up to be full-value adults, whether for meat or breeding.
Social Skills
So, what constitutes 'social skills' in a sow? One must consider the interactions a sow faces during her life, not only with contemporaries but also with farmers. Different social behaviors have historically evolved in animals because these behaviors have helped them survive or reproduce. Positive social interactions with other animals or people contribute to being more sociable.
When breeding sows with enhanced social skills, we can eliminate extra stress on the animals and producers during all stages of production. Social sows are easier to handle and show their maximum potential and are adaptive and work together for the group's good, not in competition with each other.
A sow with social skills can easily cope with social situations without becoming too stressed or negatively impacting her behavior. For the farmer, a more friendly sow is easy to handle and manage throughout production, so she is relaxed and easygoing. This is in the middle ground of fight or flight response. This calm disposition is a labor saver when considering the time needed to move, interact with, and care for the sows.
Social skills between pigs are also critical and more natural. For her contemporaries (other sows), a friendly sow easily adapts to the hierarchy structure in group housing. She interacts with others meaningfully (not picking fights, but making friends' on the playground').
Another consideration for a sow with social skills is how she interacts with her offspring after farrowing or her mothering ability. This skill starts from farrowing and continues to weaning. It begins with the sow's desire to build a nest, associated with fewer stillborn, starved, or laid-on piglets. Next, the sow's ability to farrow easily, without intervention, and to stay in the lying position until farrowing is complete, is important for her piglets to be born safely and consume enough colostrum.
From farrowing to weaning, sows that are more vocal or communicative during an active time (e.g., when standing up or eating) result in less pre-weaning mortality (e.g., from being laid on). Sows with social skills have the exceptional mothering ability from farrow to weaning, easily farrowing and caring for their piglets.
It's important to discover what it means to have a more sociable sow and find ways to achieve and improve it. Behavioral measurements can be difficult to obtain and sometimes subjective, so it is worth investigating traits that are easy to measure but will also indirectly improve the social skills of the sow. One thing that helps us select sows with social skills is to look for sows with exceptional feet, legs, and body structure. Sows in loose housing must also become accustomed to farmers in their 'personal space' when housed open and in groups, again indirectly selecting animals with better behavior towards humans.
Finally, by including traits such as the percentage of piglets born alive or the percentage of piglets weaned, there is indirect selection for better mothering ability. Sows with a high rate of piglets born alive will have fewer stillborn piglets and likely an easier farrowing process. Sows with a high percentage of weaned piglets are better at communicating their activity to their piglets while producing sufficient quantity and quality of colostrum and milk.
Breeding a sow with social skills provides many benefits. Farmers will be happy, the other sows on the playground will be happy, and she will be a great mother to many piglets. We believe selecting healthy, easy-to-manage animals will lead to better welfare, less waste, and minimized labor for farmers.
This sow laid down next to the creep and called the piglets to nurse.
"If you lose piglets because she has laid on them or because she has stepped on them and broken legs, that is not a good mothering-ability sow," says Elizabeth Hines, an extension swine specialist at Penn State University. "You want a sow to look for her piglets before laying down. She will lie down slowly to give them time to get out from underneath her or away from her. Even if you are in loose or pasture housing, you want a sow to look for her pigs before it lays down."
Teats
(And remember that boar teats are just as important as the sow as he's the one who usually passes on the problems)
There will be a lot of controversy over what I'll discuss next, but I will give the information to you exactly how it was explained to be by a swine specialist vet. When asked about the terms "even numbered" and "evenly spaced" teats, he explained that speaking of the mammary system in sows, every breed of pig (except kunekune…my addition) has adopted this terminology because it means the sows are producing the maximum and most efficient means of feeding their piglets.
He drew several freehand pictures to explain, and I'll try to reproduce them here.
Missing teats, inverted teats, or blind teats (unusable teats) are a problem when a sow has a litter larger than the teats available. And he said poor teat spacing and inverted teats are inheritable.
Extra teats at the top or bottom of a row are fine in our breed. However, every other pig breed discourages this and removes these pigs from the breeding herd. It's an individual choice. However, it is one we follow on our farm.
He said The real problem occurs when there is an extra teat OR when teats are not evenly spaced. Here's why. Consider those boxes around the normal teats. I can't draw worth a lick but imagine those boxes around each normal teat all being the same size in square inches. That's the maximum amount of tissue in that sow's mammary system that will produce milk. If you squeeze in an extra teat, you've reduced the square inches of tissue to produce milk resulting in less milk being available in all 3 of those teats. Example: each square equals nine sq inches per teat. That's 18 square inches for two teats. But now you have three teats in the same spaces as two, which results in only six sq inches of tissue to produce milk—a 33% reduction. Remember, piglets often only use one teat after birth til weaning. This means weaker piglets will be forced off more productive teats onto these reduced-production teats resulting in reduced nutrition.
This is basically how he explained it to me. Excuse my poor drawing. It does make structural and physiological sense. Poorly spaced teats create differences in the quantity of milk produced, causing differences in the amount produced for those teats when spacing is being impinged upon.
Even numbered AND evenly spaced teats are important
Human Interference
Another controversial topic that needs to be addressed is human interference in the farrowing and piglet growth process. Unfortunately, it's become common to hear stories of sows who have become aggressive or refuse to care for their litters, even those who crush piglets. Many reasons can be part of this outcome, including human interference, which causes stress. Crushing is sometimes our fault due to too much bedding or the heat source away from the sow for the piglets. Too much bedding prevents piglets from getting away from a sow that's not careful when she lies down. Watching a good mother sow do the circle while making her "sow song" is a glorious thing. She talks to them and herds them together until she has a safe place to lie down. For example, providing a heat source in a creep area trains the piglets not to need the sow for warmth. Cuddling piglets can be crushed, seeking that warmth from the sow.
Dystocia
I am not saying there is never a time to help. Stuck piglets do happen; yes, you need to know how to address that situation. Dystocia (difficult birth, farrowing taking too long) can also occur. Become informed about what's considered 'normal' and what's not. Ask your mentor. If you don't have a mentor, get one. Don't go to Facebook! Get an expert to help address your concerns.
It can be normal for a sow to rest between delivering horns, sometimes for hours. That's different than a sow in active labor for hours with no result. That's an emergency. Contact a veterinarian with concerns quickly.
First Time Moms
Humans interfere too much and too soon. First-time sows are more likely to be confused and snippy, especially when piglets get around their face during farrowing. They don't know what's going on, why they're in pain, and what's this thing crawling around their face. It's fine to remove the piglets to a safe area, like a creep until she's done farrowing and has passed the placentas. Supervised nursing for the first couple of times is fine, and most of the time, things go ok after that. Judicious use of melatonin, meloxicam, or Banamine can help if you know how to dose and use these drugs.
When humans continue to interfere and pull a litter to hand raise, things go wrong. If I had a sow die, I'd try to foster those piglets to another sow if I had one with a litter or try to save them. Ultimately, it's been proven time and again that when you pull piglets to hand raise, those piglet gilts do not themselves become good mothers, and some boars (not all) can become aggressive later on. We cannot continue to perpetuate the loss of good mothering skills; those skills were lost because a piglet wasn't raised by its dam. Poor mothering sows should be removed from your herd. It's an economic decision. Don't make it an emotional one.
You must factor in the costs needed to hand rear a litter, and only some of us have the extra time to feed them every two hours for weeks. And when those piglets prove to themselves to be poor mothers, you're not farther ahead. You've gone backward. Plus, factor in the cost of losing piglets due to poor mothering. Your sows must produce offspring to offset the costs of owning them. Most of us raise many of our pigs for the table, so having a sow not raise a litter is a huge loss from a money standpoint, a time standpoint, and a loss of an end resource.
Another common mistake is allowing a gilt/sow to become a "pet." This ties in with hand-raised piglets. They learn that humans are more important than anything more important than other pigs and even their own piglets. They will abandon their piglets when they see their "human" partner, sometimes hurting the piglets by trampling or crushing them.
Research on Mothering
Pig weaning weight and sow milking ability
Piglets rely solely on their dam for nutrition until weaning. To wean healthy, consistent litters, sows must provide ample colostrum and milk for all nursing piglets. Swine genetics, proper gestational nutrition, lactating sow management, and teat number and placement influence a sow's ability to produce milk and quality.
Colostrum provides newborn piglets with energy and hydration to maintain vital body functions. It also provides antibodies critical for protection against disease, serving as the basis of a piglet's immune system development. Colostrum intake is positively associated with preweaning survival and pig weaning weight. (PIC North America)
The mothering ability of the sow to care for her piglets is inheritable and can respond to selection. These vitality and vigor traits are due to direct genetic effects and can be selected for in maternal and sire lines.
Piglet survival results from complex interactions between the piglets, the sow, and the environment where the animals are raised.
Piglet survival until weaning depends on interacting factors such as the physical environment (Andersen et al., 2007), management routines (Andersen et al., 2007; Rosvold et al., 2017), piglet viability (Pedersen et al., 2011), and maternal behavior (Andersen et al., 2005; Ocepek and Andersen, 2017).
Starvation and crushing constitute more than 60% of all piglet deaths in loose-housed sows (Andersen et al., 2006; Vasdal et al., 2011; Ocepek et al., 2016b). This study suggests that there could be great potential in directly selecting for maternal care.
Sow communication (COM; sniffing, grunting, and nudging) and sow carefulness (CARE) was assessed on one arbitrary occasion (2–5 min of observation) immediately after morning or afternoon feeding on day 1 or 2 postpartum. In contrast, sows were active (changed position or moved around and at the moment the sow was about to lie down).
COM and CARE represent good measures or indicators of maternal care behavior during the first few days after birth when piglet losses are most likely to occur. As sows establish contact with their piglets through olfactory (sniffing), auditory (grunting), and tactile (nudging) communicative cues, they can locate the piglets' position. From an evolutionary point of view, this mechanism aids sows in keeping the piglets nearby and protecting them from danger. Awareness of the piglets' presence helps the sow become careful, attentive, and protective around the piglets (without trampling on or lying on them).
Therefore, stimulating the sow's motivation to care for her young is crucial for ensuring the future welfare and sustainability of pig production. This can be done by selecting these particular maternal traits and stimulating the sow to become more attentive through environmental factors (i.e., nest-building material, good handling to prevent fear, etc.). Ocepek and Andersen, 2017)
In Conclusion
This article was intended to educate kunekune owners on the importance of mothering ability in our breeding herds. A sow must be capable of raising a litter of piglets, with minimal human interference, to weaning age successfully. A sow who cannot…has no place in a breeding program. Research shows that mothering ability is inherited and can be selected for by informed breeding decisions. And don't forget…the boar also plays a part and should have come from a good mothering sow. Solid physical structure, including teat number and spacing, is also a part of that decision.