Call feeding gestating sows in larger groups

In electronic feeding for gestating sows, aggressive interactions most frequently occur while queuing at the feeders’ entrance. This may lead to severe injuries. Call feeding has been developed to diminish this drawback while at the same time providing a cognitive challenge for the sows. Results from a total of 67 gestating sows that had been trained for individual acoustic calls have shown that the sows remembered and improved their training over the whole production cycle. The training results at the end of the experiment revealed a theoretical limit of 60 sows per call feeding station, assuming a single 14 hour feeding period and a feed ration of 2800 g on the average.