Tips for Precision Feeding Lactation Sows

For most sow farms, feeding a single whole herd lactation diet is commonplace. Practically, lactation rooms have been designed with a single feed line and drops for each lactation crate. Because of this, producers and nutritionists are often left to select a single lactation diet with the same nutrient level for all sows in the herd.

However, advancements in sow lactation feeding equipment technology now allows for two diets (a low- and a high-nutrient diet) to be fed and blended to achieve a daily nutrient intake target over the course of the lactation period. Also, lactation nutrient requirement models predicting the daily nutrient needs based on litter performance and feed intake provides data for the diet blend to change over the lactation period.

Optimal Nutrient Intake

Genetic advancements in parity 1 gilts have documented their potential for higher litter size than older parity sows in the herd. This means the need to meet a target amino acid, energy and digestible phosphorus intake to support milk production and subsequent reproduction is critical. However, most parity 1 females eat less feed than older parity sows.

In order to achieve daily digestible lysine and energy intake targets, a more nutrient-rich diet should be fed to allow the parity 1 females to meet their dietary needs. At the same time, older parity sows that have higher feed consumption, can be offered a lower nutrient level diet and still achieve the daily nutrient intake target.

Practically, many whole herd lactation diets are formulated between 1.05% and 1.10% digestible lysine. For reference, parity 1 gilts often require a diet that is closer to 1.15-1.20% digestible lysine and older parity sows in the 0.90-0.95% digestible lysine range. Thus, it is obvious that we generally are underfeeding the youngest population and overfeeding the more mature sows with a single diet. While some swine operations feed the entire herd a parity 1 nutrient level diet, this results in both higher feed cost and nutrient excretion.

Decreased Nutrient Excretion

Research has documented feeding lactation females a blend of a high- and low-nutrient diet at different amounts over the lactation period resulted in substantial changes in nutrient excretion compared to a single standard diet.

One recently published dataset reported decreased nitrogen and phosphorus excretion by 28% and 42%, respectively while another reported N excretion decreased by 38%. The level of decrease is dependent on the based levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in the signal standard diet that is fed as well as the modeled requirements used for the target amounts blended of the two diets.

Implementation of Precision Feeding

Producers evaluating new construction or planning renovations to lactation rooms should determine the new technology cost and the return-on-investment timeframe. Remember, on-farm employees must be trained and develop needed skills of utilizing the lactation feeding technology equipment to fully capture the benefits of more accurate feeding of all females in the herd. Finally, the lactation nutrient requirement prediction model used based on production level and feed intake must be accurate to capture the anticipated advantages.