Shoulder cooling
The comfort zone of a farrowing sow and here piglets are relatively far apart. The comfort zone of farrowing sows lies around 18 – 20°C and that of piglets around 27°C. To make sure both the sow and her piglets perform the best they can, we need to create differences in climate on the level of the animals. By cooling the floor where the sow lies, the heat release of the sow can go up and that will take care of an increase of the thermic comfort of the sow. This system has several benefits, namely:
> Improvement of well-being, food intake, milk production and production results
> Better technical results of the weaned piglets (with better technical results of the fatteners as a result)
> Lower investment costs and more energy efficient than water cooled systems
> No annual costs for maintenance and energy
> Reduction of ventilation capacity possible up to 50%
> Less loss of piglets caused by being pressed to dead by the sow
> Easy to extend the system with the nose air inlet
Nose air inlet system
A pig can’t sweat, but can only lose heat by breathing or when the room temperature is lowered. By bringing cold air to the nose of the sow, she can get rid of her heat better. As a result her feed intake improves and with that her performance. The system also works as a piglet blower which decreases the number of piglets dying caused by being pressed to dead by the sow. The system ensures constant temperatures, a reduction of the ventilation standards with minimal 30% and a better air quality in front of the sows nose. Besides that, this system also has a positive influence on the technical results:
> Higher feed intake from the sow
> Higher milk production
> Higher growth of the piglets
> More evenly litter number
> Higher number of piglets being born alive
> Faster giving birth to the piglets, so the last born piglet also gets colostrum of a better quality
> Smaller number of piglets dying before weaning
