Pigs weaned per sow per year — PSY — is the single most important metric in swine production. It determines your cost of production, your profitability, and ultimately the long-term viability of your operation. Yet across Asian pig farms, from Vietnam to China to Thailand, PSY consistently underperforms global benchmarks. The good news: the gap is closeable, and the solutions are well-understood.
Having spent over 20 years managing swine operations across the UK, USA, Ireland and Russia — and having personally raised PSY from 18.8 to 23.4 in a single year, and from 21.4 to 27.9 within 12 months — I know exactly what moves the needle.
Here are the most impactful areas to focus on.
- Farrowing Management: Where PSY Is Won or Lost
The farrowing house is the heart of your operation. Most PSY losses happen here, and most of them are preventable. The key areas to address are:
Pre-farrowing preparation. Sows must be moved into clean, properly prepared farrowing crates 5-7 days before their expected farrowing date. This allows them to settle, reduces stress-related farrowing complications, and gives staff time to monitor pre-farrowing behaviour. Rushed or late moves are one of the most common and easily fixed causes of poor farrowing performance.
Farrowing supervision. Unattended farrowings are a major source of piglet loss. Stillbirth rates rise sharply when sows are left unsupervised during the critical birthing window. Where 24-hour staffing isn’t feasible, focus supervision on high-risk animals — gilts, large-litter sows, and animals showing early signs of difficulty.
Colostrum management. Every piglet must receive adequate colostrum within 6 hours of birth. Split-suckling — separating older, stronger piglets temporarily so smaller littermates can access teats — is a simple, high-impact technique that dramatically improves litter survival rates.
2. The Rescue Deck: A Game-Changer for Litter Sizes
One of the highest-impact tools in modern swine production is the rescue deck — a secondary heated area within the farrowing house where small or weak piglets can be temporarily housed, supplementally fed, and stabilised before returning to their mother or being fostered.
In my experience, implementing a well-managed rescue deck system can add 0.5 to 1.0 pigs weaned per litter within weeks. Across a 1,000-sow operation running 2.3 litters per sow per year, that’s 1,150 to 2,300 additional pigs weaned annually — a transformative improvement for minimal capital investment.
The key is discipline: rescue decks only work when staff protocols are strict, hygiene is maintained, and animals are moved in and out systematically.
3. Sow Nutrition: Feed the Sow, Feed the Litter
Nutritional management of the sow during gestation and lactation directly determines litter birth weight, piglet vitality, and subsequent litter size. Common failures in Asian operations include:
Over-conditioning in mid-gestation leading to fat sows, difficult farrowings, and poor lactation feed intake. Under-feeding in late gestation, reducing piglet birth weights and colostrum quality. Insufficient lactation feed intake, causing excessive body condition loss, poor return to oestrus, and smaller subsequent litters.
A properly designed sow feeding programme — adjusted by individual body condition score — is one of the fastest ways to improve both litter size and weaning weights.
4. Wean-to-Service Interval: Speed Matters
The time between weaning and successful re-mating is a key driver of litters per sow per year. Every extra day in the wean-to-service interval costs you pigs. Target wean-to-first-service intervals of 4-7 days, and mating rates above 90%.
The main levers are: sow body condition at weaning, boar exposure post-weaning, and gilt development programmes that ensure replacement animals are cycling regularly before entry into the breeding herd.
5. Health and Biosecurity: Protecting What You’ve Built
Disease pressure — PRRS, PED, Streptococcus, Mycoplasma — can wipe out PSY gains overnight. A robust biosecurity protocol is not optional; it is the foundation on which all other improvements rest.
Priority actions include strict vehicle and visitor controls, dedicated farm clothing and footwear, shower-in shower-out protocols, and rigorous all-in all-out management at the site level. In high-density pig-producing regions of Asia and China, biosecurity pressure is extreme — and the operations that win are those that treat it as non-negotiable.
Conclusion: PSY Improvement Is a Management Challenge
The gap between average and top-performing Asian pig farms is not primarily a genetics or equipment gap — it is a management gap. The farms achieving 25+ PSY in Vietnam, Thailand and China are doing so through disciplined farrowing management, excellent nutrition programmes, structured staff training, and relentless attention to detail.
If your operation is consistently below 22 PSY, you are leaving significant profitability on the table. The improvements are achievable — and they don’t require a complete rebuild.
AgriSwine Asia works with pig producers across Southeast Asia and China to identify the specific bottlenecks in their operations and deliver measurable, lasting improvements in PSY, FCR and cost of production. If you’d like to discuss what’s holding your numbers back, get in touch at leechafer@agriswineasia.pro.
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