Piglet Fostering

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 Fostering Management*

Cross fostering:

Make sure all staff are aware of your farm fostering policy. Sometimes practices change for the better but can revert back if your cover staff are not aware of the changes. Wherever possible leave piglets with their own mothers to avoid disruption of the litter suckling patterns; even big piglets looking secure and strong will experience growth checks if fostered, especially if moved around frequently.

Even up numbers of piglets per litter:

 Matching the number of piglets to the number of functioning teats allows each piglet to have easy access to the colostrum produced after farrowing. This improves piglet survival rates and increases the chance of piglets achieving their potential growth rates.

Helping low birth weight piglets:

 It is a great disadvantage for small piglets to have to compete with larger littermates. Litters of small piglets should be created from all the ‘smalls’ born in a given farrowing day. Foster-litters of small piglets should be put with low-parity sows; the teat size of a low-parity sow will match the small mouths of the small piglets.

Piglet sex:

 In general it is the female pigs within a contemporary group which are best able to cope with management changes. Consider fostering female piglets rather than males when possible.


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