The Rural Voice, 1998-04, Page 33The human touch
The interaction between the stock
keeper and his or her animals affects
all aspects of production and the
greatest opportunity to improve profits
is in better stockmanship
By Keith Roulston
The greatest
advances in efficiency
in pork will come
from better
stockmanship,
Dr. Peter English
(left), told partici-
pants at the
"Stockmanship: The
Art of Swine
Husbandry"
conference. The
secret is helping the
weakest animals
survive.
The greatest growth in
efficiency in the swine
industry in the next 20 years
may come from recognition of the
importance of stockmanship and
greater efforts to put some science
into this art, Dr. Peter English told a
meeting in Shakespeare, March 11.
Addressing a packed hall with 270
swine professionals, English said the
same kind of study that created huge
advances in nutrition and genetics
has not been applied as yet to
stockmanship. Stockmanship is taken
for granted, the Scottish professor
said.
"I don't think we've set out to
understand stockmanship the way we
have tried to understand nutrition.
Until you measure things you can't
find a way to improve it. Perhaps the
university community thought it was
an art and thought they couldn't do
anything about it, but I believe we
can."
At the University of Aberdeen,
English said, an attempt is being
made to help farm workers apply the
science of animal husbandry to the
art. The university had undertaken a
research and development project,
funded by the European Union's
Leonardo Da Vinci Programme. The
program is studying the interaction
between farmers and their animals in
the swine, dairy and dairy -sheep
sectors.
Good animal caregivers affect all
the other aspects of swine
production, English said, including
nutrition, genetics, health, social
interaction with other pigs and
climate the pigs live in. It is the
major reason why herds with similar
genetics, the same feed and almost
identical buildings can have a wide
range of results ranging from 9.5 live
births per litter on a poor farm to
11.5 on a good one and pigs weaned
per sow per year of 16 on a poor farm .
to 25 on a good farm.
Good stock people know how to
achieve the optimum relationships
between their pigs so as to stimulate
reproductive activity, achieve good
heat detection and create excellent
conditions for mating so as to obtain
high conception rates and litter size
while preventing those relationships
that result in pig vices such as tail,
ear and flank biting, English said.
Coming from the Loch Loman
district of Scotland, English said hill
farmers have always known that their
ability to continue to farm depended
being able to identify with the
individual animal in their flock or
herd. They knew that focussing on
the two vulnerable animals that could
die was more important than the
eight strong animals that could make
it on their own.
"That's what stockmanship is
about," he said. "identify the
vulnerable individuals early and look
after them."
At birth, for instance, a caring
attendant can greatly affect
the number of surviving pigs
in a litter by identifying the pigs most
in danger and filling their needs in
the critical first half-hour of birth.
"It's the start that counts," English
said.
The piglets need heat source and
plenty of bedding for the first 24
hours (he uses shredded paper in
Scotland) to help them retain their
heat. Put bedding right across the
centre of the pen where the sow's
udder is which will help protect the
udder and keep the piglets warm, he
said. There is danger when the
APRIL 1998 29