Estação de alimentação eletrônica: comportamento alimentar de matrizes suínas gestantes e sua relação com a sustentabilidade

Abstract

The present work was developed with the objective of analyzing the feeding behavior of pregnant sows in the electronic feeding station system and its relation with sustainability. A total of 2,020,872 data records were collected from feeding reports from 50 feeding stations for the entire year 2020 from a commercial swine farm located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Reports were collected via remote access by the software of the feeding stations. The analyzes were carried out descriptively and with the making of histograms using SAS (2012). The results show that the sows' permanence time inside the station ranges from 9 to 17 minutes, depending on the order of birth, the programmed time for each feeding curve and the amount of ration given to each sow. The gilt, grand sow and lean sow categories remain longer within the feeding station when compared to the fat sow and ideal sow categories. 66% of accesses to the matrices remain between 0 and 60 seconds in the station. The accesses with feed consumption are between 540 and 1000 seconds. Sows prefer to access the station between 9 and 14 hours after the beginning of the feeding cycle. However, 75.96% of the sows consume feed in the first 10 hours of operation of the stations. The piglet category prefers to access the station at later times than the other categories. The behavior of access to the station is similar between the categories in the two different hours of operation of the stations, from 00 am to 23 pm and from 17 pm to 16 pm. However, during station operating hours between 5 pm and 4 pm, the percentage of accesses to the station in the last three hours of the power cycle is higher in all categories. 84.5% of the sows make up to 5 daily accesses to the station with and without food. However, 85% of the sows consume feed in just one accession. Feeding stations collaborate with sustainability through greater control of the body condition score (ECC), less feed waste, reducing the use of raw material and the excretion of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) into the environment. In addition, it provides a higher quality and intellectual capacity of the workforce, being an economically viable system. It is concluded that most breeders make short accesses and without feed consumption to the season. In addition, the fat sow and ideal sow categories prefer to consume feed in the first hours of the feeding cycle, while the gilt, grand sow and lean sow categories present a greater distribution of feed consumption in the first ten hours, with the majority of sows consume feed in just one daily access. The end of the feeding cycle during the day increased the number of accesses to the station without feed consumption in the last three hours. The feeding station is a sustainable system that collaborates with the three pillars of sustainability.