Heat Pads Shown Fully Adequate for Warming Young Piglets
Farmscape for October 1, 2002 (Episode 1082) Research conducted by the University of Manitoba shows heat pads alone are just as effective for keeping baby pigs warm as heat pads used in conjunction with heat lamps. Although most people use heat lamps for keeping piglets warm during the first week or two after farrowing, many are switching to heat pads. Dr. Qiang Zhang, a Professor in the University's Biosystems Engineering Department, says the study compared the performance of four groups of piglets, two of which were kept warm using heat pads and two of which used both heat pads and heat lamps for the first two days after farrowing. Clip-Dr. Qiang Zhang-University of Manitoba Most people are still concerned about the first few days without heat lamps so there's quite a few producers in Manitoba still using two systems. Even though they put the heat pads in, they still use heat lamps for the first day or two. Manitoba Hydro actually is interested in looking into this issue. They want to find out if the heat lamps actually are needed for the first two days. What we did is we actually set up a test in one room where we had four different sections. In two sections we only had heat mats and the other two sections we had both heat mats and heat lamps and we tried to compare the performance of the piglets. What we've found out so far is there's no performance difference between the two different heating systems. That means that heat lamps are not really needed for the first two days. Dr. Zhang says the research showed no significant statistical difference between weight gain or mortality of piglets raised under the two systems. He says, by eliminating the heat lamps, producers will save the capital costs of purchasing and installing the equipment as well as the energy required to run the second heating system. He says scientists are still crunching the numbers to determine exactly how much money eliminating the heat lamps will save. For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane. *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council