How to keep baby pigs alive while making them bulletproof
Dr. Larry Coleman, veterinarian, spoke to attendees at the Annual Four Star Pork Industry Conference held in Muncie, Indiana in September 2024. His message focused on the four key steps that are needed to improve newborn piglet survivability while setting them up for success for the next six months.
Dr. Coleman brought a cute stuffed pig with him named Douglas, who represents all the little pigs that are going to be born across the USA in a 24 hour period. Based on Dr. Coleman’s rough calculations, there will be about half a million pigs born in the next 24 hours. Of those, about 100,000 won’t eventually survive.
One of the most important keys for keeping baby pigs alive is maintaining a sense of urgency. Dr. Coleman states that a baby piglet’s oxygen will end during the birthing process, so there must be a strong sense of urgency to help them be born.
“If you’re trying to be born and your mother is no longer giving you oxygen, the 30-minute rule does not apply,” he said. “Therefore, if you’re going to be successful with babies, you have to have a sense of urgency. A baby can’t wait for anything. Unless you have a high-energy sense of urgency, and you can maintain that day after day, you cannot be routinely successful in keeping babies alive.”
Once you have a sense of urgency, you must have a good strategy to keep baby pigs alive. A sound strategy combined with urgency is therefore the secret to piglet livability.
Four steps to keeping baby piglets alive
Newborn piglets are fragile, and caregivers must work hard to keep baby pigs alive. Dr. Coleman suggests keeping the following day-one care steps simple so that even a new caregiver on his/her first day will be helpful for babies.
#1. Get ‘em born
“My first principle is that you must have a successful birth. Therefore, I sit down with the caregivers and discuss about how to help piglets survive birth,” he said. “I talk about urgency and the desperation the piglets must feel when they’re trying to be born. Then we brainstorm together, how we as a farm can help babies survive birthing.”
He said this discussion always involves how much time caregivers are in the farrowing house.
“I have several client groups over many farms. Many of these farms are 24-7 staffed,” he said. “I’m not asking you to do that. I know it’s a hard thing to achieve, but we can think of ways to extend hours of care so that the birthing problems can be dealt with. If you’re not there, you can’t help piglets. It’s plain and simple.”
#2. Keep ‘em warm
“A baby pig can get cold in one to two minutes. And if you don’t believe that, just sit there and watch them. When a baby pig gets cold, they’re doomed; they just can’t get past that. So you’ve to get them warm and keep them warm.”
Dr. Coleman said that he works with caregivers to brainstorm what could work for that farm in the area of keeping babies warm. Towel drying and/or powders are very helpful.
“The home run strategy is to pick up the baby and move it to the udder, hopefully under a heat lamp,” he said. “If you’re in a Nebraska large sow unit, and there’s a blizzard outside and you’re the only person in the farrowing room, what are you going to do? In my book, I’m going to sleeve sows and move the babies to the comfort zone.”
#3. Get ‘em colostrum
“Next, caregivers have to help newborn piglets get colostrum. I cannot express to you how important this is and how poorly piglets will do if they don’t get enough colostrum,” he said. “We know how to get pigs colostrum; it’s not rocket science. However, often piglets do not get adequate amounts.”
#4. Get ‘em a mom
“Mothers are very important! Moms are, among other things, milk machines. Babies need milk every hour. Therefore, we must find a good mom for the babies with a sense of urgency,” he explained. This is often a problem.
Removing obstacles
“This talk is not just about caregivers. I want to remind you that owners, supervisors, managers, etc., must remove obstacles from caregivers so that babies get the care they need.
There are usually obstacles on the farm that are lowering piglet survivability. Dr. Coleman tries to help the team identify those obstacles and remove them.
“What are obstacles? Well, they’re pretty common – understaffing, bad comfort zones, bad leadership on the farm or in the farrowing house,” he said. “Remember that usually caregivers can’t remove obstacles. It’s managers, supervisors or owners who need to remove the obstacles. Only after the obstacles are removed can you expect caregivers to make bulletproof pigs.”
Day one pig care
Dr. Coleman often hears people say that he talks too much about day one care on herd visits. They already know all there is about day one care. This is a problem.
“Farrowing piglets is continuous (24/7/365) and we get numb to the importance of it. It’s just like physical health. If you want to live a long life, you need to get enough sleep, you need to maintain your weight, and you need to exercise daily. Do we do that? No, we don’t do that, and we need to be reminded. I believe that we as an industry could do better than we are and therefore constant reminders are important,” he said.
He also hears caregivers say they can’t make a difference because of their position on the farm. However, he encourages them that no matter where they are in the hierarchy of the system that they can provide leadership. He believes if you’re passionate about the importance of day one care, you can make a difference, and you will get noticed.
“When does day one care get easy? It gets easy when it becomes part of culture. Once things get ingrained into culture, it’s like brushing your teeth. It’s no longer work. It’s just the way you do things,” he said.
