VET ON CALL: Don’t blame your animals for stunted growth, it’s all your fault

The email landed into my inbox two months ago and I could not help musing at the several accusations the farmer had against her pigs.
“I keep feeding my pigs well but they have refused to grow,” she concluded. Her main concern was that her pigs were looking too small for their respective ages. They were also thin and dirty.

For some reason, they could not stay clean even though the pens were regularly washed. She requested me to visit her farm in Limuru for assessment and advice.

The report set me thinking about animal welfare. If they could talk and act in ways similar to humans, they would sue people to bankruptcy. A lot of times I get calls on issues blamed totally on animals but whose occurrence emanates from our inadequacies in understanding animal biology and behaviour.

In our case, the shortfalls are further complicated by the fact that there is no legal requirement for livestock farmers to have a minimum level of training to qualify as a farmer.
Most livestock knowledge is obtained from peers and upbringing because most Kenyans have grown and still grow up in the rural areas where the main economic activity is subsistence agriculture, including small-scale livestock keeping.

I replied to the email, asking the author to call me on phone for full discussions.

Keeping piglets

Mary informed me she had kept pigs for about eight months and was concerned that the suckling and weaned piglets were too small for their age.
They had simply refused to grow even though she thought she was feeding them very well. The adult pigs were skinny, had wounds on the body and many of them kept scratching their bodies with their legs or rubbing against the pen walls.

I agreed to visit her farm because her problem could not be addressed remotely. From the outset, I diagnosed human inadequacy that could only be resolved through training on pig production.

Mary was surprised when I quoted the fee for her on farm training, but I assured her that she would never regret.
Her pig unit was set on a large crop farm containing maize and vegetables farmed by other people. Mary was eagerly waiting for me and she took my colleague and I through her pig unit. It comprised a feed store and three pig pens made off-cuts supported with wooden poles and timber runners and roofed with corrugated iron sheets.

Concrete floor

The floor was of rough concrete with a drain in the middle traversing all the three pens. The pens were adequately spaced for the 40 animals but there was inadequate grouping of the pigs according to their age, gender and reproduction status. The boar and the dry mother pigs, otherwise called sows, were all in the same pen.

The animals were definitely doing badly in most aspects of pig farming. They were, however, a good cross-breed of Landrace and Large white pigs. In addition to the problems Mary had reported, the piglets had wounds on the tails, some of them raw and bleeding.
Their hair was thin, rough and long while that of adults was long, thin and curly almost looking woolly. Such hair cannot remain clean as it is low in oils that prevent dirt from staining the hair.

Sows were not coming on heat after weaning the piglets. In all the groups of pigs, the hip and spinal bones as well as the ribs were clearly visible. Four-month old piglets were below 25kg of body weight when they should have been about 40kg. All the pigs looked very unhappy and sluggish.

Vegetable left-overs

I asked Mary what she feeds the pigs and the feeding programme. Her worker Peter, gladly volunteered, “We feed them 2kg of pollard twice daily and lots of vegetable left-overs from the farm. We also give them some water which we pour into the containers in the pens,” he said, adding they were feeding the pigs well but they appeared to be a bad breed.

At that rate, I told Mary, she would never get the pigs to the market.

Pig farming is both an art and a science and requires good understanding of the animal’s biology, management practices and marketing options. Housing must be made of durable, easily cleaned materials. Stone, concrete, metal, iron sheets, metal grills and solid metal are some of the best materials for pig housing. The floor must be smooth enough not to injure the pigs but also rough enough for the pigs not to slip. Wooden walls are bad because they harbour parasites. In Mary’s case, they had mites which had infected the pigs’ skin causing the constant itching and scratching.

Pigs have a digestive system quite similar to the human one. They should be fed on high quality feed containing sufficient amounts of energy in form of carbohydrates. Proteins, vitamin and minerals are added as energy alone is not sufficient.

Cereals

Such feed supplies the required nutrients for efficient growth (weight gain), reproduction, milk production and body maintenance. Cereal grains, especially maize, are the main ingredient of pig feed, but cereals are poorly utilised without proteins, minerals and vitamins. Mary’s pigs were almost entirely being fed energy in form of pollard, a wheat by product. No wonder they could not thrive despite eating large quantities.

The pigs also lacked sufficient water intake. The water requirement for pigs is between 10 and 30 litres, provided at will. Inadequate water provision, as in Mary’s case, results in poor feed consumption, poor feed utilisation and poor performance.

Due to the precise requirements of pig feed formulations, farmers should buy commercial feeds bought from reputable manufacturers or produced on the farm with advise from expert nutritionists. Anything short of that results in frustration. The use of vegetable waste is discouraged as it may cause infection to the pigs, inadequate nutrition and too much energy resources are used to digest the plant matter.

A commercial pig farmer should aim at achieving baconer weight for her pigs in six to seven months. A farmer should try the feeds in the market from reputable companies and stick with one that attains the slaughter weight for her pigs in about six months.
After the training, I agreed with Mary to do a follow up to help build her competence in pig farming.