Farmscape for January 31, 2018

A Swine Physiologist with Zinpro says trimming the hooves of the breeding sow can help improve her performance and extend her longevity.
The main reasons for culling, especially among gilts and first parity sows, are a lack of reproductive success and lameness.
Dr. Mark Wilson, a Swine Physiologist with Zinpro and an Adjunct Professor with the Universities of Wisconsin and Minnesota, says we know when trimming dairy cattle, we get higher milk production.

Clip-Dr. Mark Wilson-Zinpro:
That idea started giving us, well maybe we're going to help production in sow milk production, prolife racy with pigs, the issue of performance of these animals and what we find is that taking care of the feet, worrying about lesions, doing the trimming has given us a benefit in production issues.
The best benefit with trimming is particularly trimming dew claws, long dew claws and long toes.
Functional trimming means that we're actually even going to try to trim for the angle that the sow is stepping onto her claws or her feet so that it helps her with proper structure and wear and then we shouldn't have to trim her again
Some trimming occurs again a second time with sows if they've got a factor that is creating the long toe effect that we don't have control of.
There are some injuries that do that and there's issues where sows have the wrong posture and then the toe grows longer to try to reach and spread the surface weight out on the feet
There's multiple reasons for this but trimming does help with particularly the length and the shape of the claws and will improve that, helps locomotion also of the these sows.

Dr. Wilson says if you can get that sow back up on her feet and you get the structure so that she walks with less locomotion problems and better wear on her claws it'll probably mean at least two to three more parities.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork