excellent we all agree minced stillborn piglets is a bad idea. end of aguement. would exposing your gilts to an unknown bug in the piglets poo not be risky until you have had it micobiology tested. and if the piglets have not been sick then whats the point. are the pigs on soil or concrete. if soil they should have been exposed to loads of bugs.
;DFinally someone has an understanding of the whole principle of "feedback". Oh I am as happy
That is why it is important to establish what the bug is by consultation with a Vet. Once you have established which disease this is you can assess whether feedback can be used or not.
The only reason feedback is mainly used, if ATALL, is to build up the immunity against Ecoli scours(and maybe 1 or 2 other scours) in piglets. So you exposed your gilts to the problem to trigger off their immunity. That is solely what you are doing.
A very cheap form of vaccination as you pay nothing for it, and it exposes the gilts to bugs that are relevant to your farm.
May I add that these gilts are NOT inpig, so it cause them no ill effect. In the same way most vaccinations on are carried out approx. 6 weeks before mating.
There are approx. 22 types of Ecoli scour and a vaccine only covers 6 types(?) so feedback can be more effective.
As to the feeding of stilborns and mummies that is very rarely a good idea and can at times do more harm than good.
This I have never practiced.
As to feeding back pigelts that have died from scour, I have only ever done that once, back in 1994 against Ecoli scour(Abbottstown) to the sows and gilts. It was done only for a short period of time, say a month, and it proved very effective as the problem went. No more sick piglets.
It is always only a short term method to solve a long term problem.
In 1994 there may not have been a vaccine to this problem anyway which is why we did what we did at the time.
Alot has changed since then and there may well now be a vaccine now available.
And as Blonde has mention, when farrowing outdoors sows will eat there own afterbirth and any died piglets as this is what they would do in the wild anyway(to prevent preditors from finding her live piglets) and it causes them no ill effects.
This they have been doing long before the medieval days and it has never encouraged them to commit cannibalis.
And the reason I dragged the subject of feedback up was also that if your pigs are in full heath, then feedback is a wate of time, but her argument is that you may aswell do it anyway.
I suppose that is her choice.
As to what I now do, yes I drive trucks. Spent 3 years over here running an outdoor unit, then an indoor unit, didn't like either locations, so we move from west to east.
A shame for me as I have been pig farming for over 25 years.(still keep my hand in by doing this)
I still keep looking, so lets hope one day I find what I want!
