Nutrition and Feeding

Producing the best quality pork is crucial for any swine operation, and the key factor for it is a solid, well-balanced, and efficient nutrition plan. Whether you’re raising pigs on a commercial basis or for your own personal needs, a large part of caring for your animals is providing the correct swine nutrition and feed.

In this section, you’ll find a broad range of resources covering topics such as managing swine nutrition, feeding, and delivery, including how to estimate water needs. Whether you’re going into full-scale production, raising small groups of pigs or entering part-time swine production, you’ll find all the tips, information, and tools you need.

Swine Feed and Management

A fundamental part of being a successful pork producer is being able to meet pigs’ nutritional requirements and dietary needs, including the correct amount of water.

Not only is the correct amount of feed important, it also has to meet the very strict standards of the Food Safety Modernization Act. Understanding the risks involved with feeding your pigs scraps from your table is also vital.

Mycotoxins are something else that producers need to be aware of because feed grains contaminated by these naturally occurring toxins can be detrimental to your pork production. If your pig farm is affected because of a toxin or some deadly disease, you can reduce the impact if you’ve got a Secure Pork Supply Plan in place.

An effective way to determine whether you’re providing adequate nutrition is body scoring your hogs. Penn State Extension has a video that explains how body scoring works.

Feeding Sows During Farrowing and Lactation

Pigs have different dietary and nutritional requirements at various stages of their life cycle. Farrowing and lactating sows, in particular, require specialized diets. After farrowing, for example, it’s vital the sow starts eating as soon as possible. Appropriate pre-farrowing feed management ensures this happens.

When a sow is lactating, the nutrients needed for producing milk for the piglets should come predominantly from their feed. A sow that is having to rely on her own reserves may be unable to return to estrous and be re-bred.

That’s not to say these are the only considerations. The feed given to gestating sows, for example, has to be strictly rationed, to avoid overeating.

The ultimate goal of a correct feed management plan is for the sows to produce a large litter of healthy pigs that stay healthy and grow quickly.

Piglets Weaning and Nutrition

When piglets are weaned, it’s time for the pork producer to take charge of their feed levels and ensure they are getting adequate nutrition. To maximize the growth of your piglets and effectively manage feed costs, several key factors have to be taken into account. These include feed and water intake, feeder adjustment, identification of starve-outs, pen space, phase feeding, and feed budgets.

The nutritional requirements of weaned pigs change rapidly as the weeks pass. Pigs that are weaned earlier than five weeks of age require several different diets. Small producers are often advised to leave weaning until after five weeks of age because providing the right nutrition is much simpler.