Pig ear notching system
Why is knowing the age of every pig important?
Knowing the age of every pig is THE MOST IMPORTANT piece of information in a commercial piggery.
Without it you can send pigs to the abattoir for a year, only to be told by your auditor that you have not made any profit for the year.
How to avoid this?
Know that the industry standard weight for a 16 week old pig is 70kg of live weight.
Know the EXACT age of every pig in your piggery - even if you have 1000’s
How to know every pig’s age?
Ear notch piglets with the week of the year they were born in (done together with teething, tailing and iron injection)
Feed intake and weight-for-age guide
Pig Ear notching system - by the week of the year they were born in
Ear notch ALL piglets born (when doing teeth and tailing) will enable you to know exactly how old every pig in your piggery is.
This in turn will enable you to benchmark with industry standards to identify low performance problems so that you can look at how to improve them.
The chart below shows Mated Date > Due Date > Week born:
Sow gestation chart (115 days)
For instance:
If you weigh a 16-week old pig and it does not weigh 70kg then you know you have a problem:
Start looking for the cause of the problem
Your problem may be:
Feed quantity
Feed quality
Hygiene
Genetics
Housing
Management
If you don’t know you have a problem, you cannot fix it!
The chart below displays the ear notching system by week of the year:
