Sow small group feeding half-limit feed intake

The sow's feeding methods mainly include small group feeding, limit bar feeding, and large-group electronic feeding methods on-demand feeding. The sow swarming pattern can satisfy the physiological and behavioral habits of pigs, with less restrictions on pigs, free movement of sows, enhanced physical fitness, improved reproductive performance, and meet the requirements of livestock welfare. However, feeding by using this feeding pattern may cause the sows to compete for food and fighting, which may not only cause uneven body condition of pregnant sows but also adversely affect the maintenance of normal pregnancy. Sow limit bar feeding mode is convenient for sow feeding and management, easy to control the uniformity of body condition, but this method limits the sow activity, does not meet the requirements of livestock welfare, pig bar investment is also higher. On-demand feeding of large groups of sows can be easily controlled by electronic feeding, but the system's investment is large.

Small-group feeding semi-limit feeding methods can not only reduce the competition of sows during feeding, but also reduce the restrictions on sow activities, which is beneficial to the improvement of sow reproductive performance, relative investment limit bars and electronic feeding systems. . At present, the technology has been promoted and used in developed countries in the foreign pig industry, and some newly-established pig farms in China have adopted small-group rearing models. The sows in the pens that installed the feed limit bar clearly showed that they did not interfere with each other when they ate, and they did not rely on the rank-order relationship to bully the food.

Technical essentials:

The size of each semi-meal limit column is 0.6-0.8 meters long, 0.8 meters high, and the net width of the feeding site is 0.45-0.55 meters. The physical partition is 0.05-0.06 meters above the ground. The partitions of the half-limit bar are solid plates, which may be plastic plates or other materials. The partition is connected with the steel column and the steel column is connected with the ground. The number of breeding pigs was determined according to the net width of the feeding position and the number of feeding positions in the small group of rearing pigs.