Case study: younger herd structure supports increase in pigs weaned in evolving business

Business summary

The Blanchards run a mixed pig and arable farm with other diversified income streams. Giles Blanchard manages the pig enterprise and Edward Blanchard is the arable manager; the overall business is overseen by James Blanchard. They farm just over 2,500 acres (c.1,012 hectares) and grow winter wheat, winter barley, spring barley, beans, oilseed rape and oats.

All FYM is incorporated within the arable enterprise which, in turn, provides straw to the pigs. The business has its own mill and mix system utilising home grown cereals wherever possible – it aims to be self-sufficient in cereals. They intend to market over 21,000 finished pigs per year from around 900 sows.

Breeding herd performance

Changing their herd structure has not been the only factor involved but the Blanchards were focused on improving breeding herd recording and performance to capitalise on the potential created by reinvesting in the business.

When Giles’ father, Tim, heard about our Gilt Watch initiative, it fitted well with what they were hoping to achieve. It also coincided with a number of other changes, including moving from an indoor to an outdoor herd, introducing genetics more suited to outdoor production and moving to a three-week batch system.

Giles began managing the breeding herd in March 2020 and was keen to continue in this direction. Their aim was to increase process control and maintain a more consistent flow of pig numbers and quality throughout the business, from replacement gilts to the piglets going on to stock the finishing sheds, where they rear all their progeny.

Improving retention

“Stephen Hall provided some robust figures at the Gilt Watch meetings, looking at specific gilt cohorts as well as overall herd performance,” said Tim.

Like other producers, the Blanchards could see from their own figures that, when they followed sows through each parity, the likelihood of a drop in performance increased from parity six onwards. But there is no way of knowing which sows will show a dip in performance. By removing them at parity five, producers can retain greater control.

Parities three to five are statistically the most productive of a sow’s life and it is only once she has had her third litter that the investment cost of gilt rearing or purchase is repaid, and she begins to make a profit.

“We used to have sows in parities seven, eight or nine,” said Giles. “Now we have hardly any sows over five parities.”

At the end of 2018, figures showed that 10% of services were for sows in parities 6 to 8, by the end of 2021, only 2% of services were for parity six sows and none greater than that.

Meanwhile, the numbers of sows served in parities 1 to 3 rose from 62% in 2018 to 78% in 2021, reflecting the increased number of gilts being introduced to adjust the parity profile and bring the average age down.

Strict culling

At weaning, Giles and his team follow a very strict policy to cull almost every sow that has had five litters. “If we’re slightly short on numbers, we’ll keep the odd fifth parity sow who has had consistently good numbers born alive and weaned.

“After we’ve pulled out the fifth and sixth parity sows, we’ll also cull any younger sows or gilts with very poor performance.”

When selecting for sire line services, the first criteria is numbers born alive. They then consider numbers weaned, although it can be difficult to fully keep track given that sows are farrowing outdoors, and they carry out some cross-fostering.

Average herd performance figures have improved from 23.4 pigs weaned per sow per year in 2018, when they joined Gilt Watch, to 25.1 in 2021. Over that time, average numbers weaned per litter increased from 10.9 to 11.5.

Replacement gilts

Gilts are managed differently from weaning; they are put in a group with the small gilts and fed a different creep diet to ensure strong growth and development. They aim to pull out 50 replacement gilts at 40 kg each time, which then go outside and are fence trained.

They are fed a specific gilt rearer diet, with the intention being to serve as many of these as possible to make sure they can bring in good replacements. In the past, they would pull out 36 gilts to achieve the 36 they needed but this meant they weren’t quite getting enough gilts coming through each week and would often find themselves topping up gilt replacement numbers from the finishing shed.

“When we analysed the data, we saw that the performance of the animals that came out of the finishing herd was more inconsistent,” Tim explained. “So, we wanted to make sure we could select the right number of good quality replacements from our gilt pool every time.” Typically, 31% of animals served are gilts – 40 out of 130.

The annual replacement rate has been above 60% during the transition, although now the herd has reached the target profile, they will no longer need to put in so many gilts.

Service management

The feeding plan is focused on maintaining the right condition throughout the breeding process. The gilts are fed ad lib until three weeks before service, then they are ration fed and synchronised. During the week of service, feed is provided ad lib again before going on to a ration-fed dry sow diet. V-boars are used to stimulate oestrus and Regumate ® is given at a similar time each morning.

Finishing herd

“Looking at the system as a whole, finishing the pigs is just as important as breeding them,” Giles said. “Having more reliable, productive sows means we can keep fairly even weaning numbers coming through all year round. In a three-week batch system, you must have enough pigs on the ground each time to make it flow.” Pigs are usually weaned at 28 days with average weights of 7.5-8 kg.

Some of the old buildings on the indoor unit were converted to straw-based finisher accommodation, with scrape-through passageways, temperature-controlled natural ventilation (via Galebreaker automated curtains) and full data management using a Farmex monitoring system for water usage, feed intake and temperature.

Future plans

When they next move sites, the intention is to keep all gilts together and for them to continue in the same group until they reach parity three, with a single parity in each paddock, which should aid more focused management.

Plans also include moving from groups of 10 sows to individual farrowing paddocks, to enable individual management of the sows; this should help to further improve performance. Longer term, Giles would also like to introduce individual electronic tagging.

“We might also consider switching to buying in replacement gilts, as the unselected gilts and landrace boars we keep don’t always finish that well,” says Giles. “This could also free up some space and could enable us to move the dry sows into indoor straw yards, as they tend to cause the most poaching outdoors.”

Sustainability, carbon footprint, soil and surface run-off are all big issues for outdoor production and Giles is trying various ways to address these, including planting trees around the current site. He also plans to plant the next site with a cover crop ahead of the pigs. “It will also be a much bigger site as we want to rotate and rest the paddocks.”

While finisher mortality is down at 3-4%, they feel they are still spending more than they would like to on veterinary costs, so, if the pig price was higher and more consistent, they might do a full repopulation.

Whichever changes come next, keeping a firm handle on herd structure and performance figures will continue to be a priority for the Blanchards.

To find out more about Gilt Watch, get in touch with Pat Loten or visit our Gilt Watch web page.