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Modern sows produce large volumes of milk. Relative to her body weight, a good sow produces more milk than a dairy cow! This high level of milk production results in daily nutrient requirements that are about three times higher than during gestation. Feeding management during gestation focuses on minimizing embryo and fetal losses and on preparing the sow for farrowing and lactation. Older and heavier sows have increased nutrient needs and will require more feed to maintain their body than younger sows. The most common thing and also resulted to the most economical approach is to control the amount of feed offered to sows. I usually recommend on the gestation diets, high fiber ingredients such as wheat bran, soya, barley and wheat and in the opposite site restriction of corn, oils and fats minimize in this way the energy content. The primary challenge of feeding highly productive sows is to minimize the negative nutrient (energy and protein balance) during lactation in order to minimize short term and long term reproductive performance problems. The level of milk yield is in part a function of the lactational ability of the sow (body size, body reserves, nutrition) and in part a function of the suckling stimulus of the young (litter size, piglet weight and piglet vigour). Milk yield also increases with parity number but so also does litter size-so yield per piglet tends not to increase with parity number. In general, lactation diets for highly productive sows should contain ingredients that are concentrated sources of energy and protein such as corn and soybean meal. On the other hand we should decrease the amount in fiber content cause dilute the nutrient content of the diet and may limit total nutrient intake. Supplemental fat can be added to lactation diets in an effort to increase energy intake. Since the sow transfers dietary fat to milkfat, the calorie intake of nursery pigs is increased, thus weaning weights are improved. The overall goal of the feeding program for lactating sows should be to economically optimize energy and nutrient in order to support sow body maintenance and maximize litter performance while minimizing negative effects on subsequent return to breeding, litter size and sow longevity.
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