Module

Sow & Breeding

The breeding-herd record, built for swine. Track every sow from service to wean, log heat, mating, and farrowing the day they happen, develop gilts on backfat, cull with reason codes, and benchmark your reproductive numbers against per-farm targets — with the full PigKnows KPI report, a 52-week Production Charts PDF emailed weekly per farm, and feed curves written straight back to the Nedap feeders.

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app.swineops.com — Sow & Breeding

The SwineOps Sow & Breeding module — Production Charts: 52 breeding weeks, every KPI

What it does

Breeding & farrowing

Sow cards with full parity history, service, farrowing timeline, repro events, health flags, and current room and farm
Heat detection and mating events with wean-to-service interval tracking, on a breeding-week anchor
Pregnancy checks and return-to-estrus flagging
Farrowing records — born alive, stillborn, and mummies, with litter detail

Gilt development & culling

Gilt Development Unit (GDU) tracking from entry to first service
Backfat-scan and weight checkpoints recorded through gilt development
Sow culling and mortality with reason codes and parity at removal — culling rate paired with replacement
Weekly output, parity structure, deaths, and abortion / not-in-pig metrics, with chart gaps rather than false zeros

Reporting & benchmarks (Performance Reporting add-on)

The full PigKnows performance report — every KPI, at parity, with conception at day 35 and 49
Production Charts — a two-page, 52-week chart PDF per farm, emailed weekly to the recipients each farm names
Per-farm KPI targets, with the weekly breeding target first, and KPI cells scored against them
Fed by the PigKnows API or an uploaded export, so it works before the integration is switched on

Nedap / PigInsight

Automated sow weights and daily feed intake, graded against genetic-line targets parity by parity
Closed-loop feeding — feed curves and weight-condition scores written back to the electronic sow feeders on a weekly slot
Runs stand-alone without PigKnows, or reconciles per farm by CSV or API; abortion alerts by gestation week
Pause or disconnect one farm's connection, and an emailed per-farm sync report with charts and the watch list

Body condition & feed

Body-condition state from weight, with sows flagged when they drift light or heavy
Ration alterations tracked per gestation cycle as an append-only history, marked on the intake chart
Feed curves by stage and parity, uploaded from a spreadsheet or built in-app
Every setting for the module on one tabbed page

A closer look

SwineOps Sow & Breeding — Body-condition dashboard — Body-condition dashboard

SwineOps Sow & Breeding — Active sows, condition and weeks out of band — Active sows, condition and weeks out of band

SwineOps Sow & Breeding — Farrowing analytics — Farrowing analytics

SwineOps Sow & Breeding — Sow card with the Nedap weight curve — Sow card with the Nedap weight curve

How it works

1
Record service

Log the mating event and boar/AI source; the sow card opens the breeding cycle on the breeding week.
2
Track returns

Sows that return to estrus surface automatically for re-service once a preg-check result comes in.
3
Track to farrow

Capture the farrowing — born alive, stillborn, mummies — and the litter starts its lot.
4
Wean & report

As wean events come in, the KPI report and the weekly Production Charts update against each farm's targets.

KPIs this module tracks

Farrowing rateBorn alive per litterPre-wean mortalityPigs weaned per sow per yearWean-to-service intervalConception at day 35 / 49Culling and replacement rateWeekly breedings vs target

How it connects

Sow & Breeding is the front of the lifecycle. Wean events hand pigs to the lots that Grow-Finish feeds and tracks; culls and mortalities flow into Financial as inventory changes; and every KPI breach — a farrowing rate or a breeding week drifting off target — is one of the signals the Operations Hub surfaces to the right manager.

Sow & Breeding replaces the binder of sow cards and the spreadsheet someone rebuilds every month. Because heat and mating, farrowing, gilt development, and culling all live in one record, the numbers that drive the herd — farrowing rate, born alive, pigs weaned per sow per year — are current the moment the barn logs an event, not three weeks later. And because the module talks to PigKnows and to the Nedap feeders in both directions, the report your vet reads and the curve the feeder runs come from the same place.

Frequently asked

Does it track born alive separately from total born?

Yes. Farrowing records capture born alive, stillborn, and mummified separately, so your born-alive average and pre-wean mortality are accurate rather than blended.

We already get a PigKnows report. Why this one?

Because it is the same report, with your targets on it, and it comes to the right people. The Performance Reporting add-on pulls PigKnows (or takes an export), builds the full KPI report at parity, and emails each farm's Production Charts and performance report to the recipients that farm names, once a breeding week.

Can we develop gilts on backfat?

Yes. Gilt development tracks entry, weight, and backfat-scan checkpoints through to first service, so a group's condition is visible before the gilts are bred.

Does it connect to our Nedap electronic sow feeders?

Yes. SwineOps pulls sow weights and daily feed intake from Nedap/PigInsight, grades the weight curves against genetic-line targets by parity, and writes feed curves and weight-condition scores back to the feeders on a weekly slot — closed loop. It also runs without PigKnows if that's how your herd is set up.

How does body-condition monitoring work without hand-scoring every sow?

It's derived from the sow's weight against the target for her parity and stage, so a sow that drifts light or heavy is flagged automatically, and any ration change is kept as a per-cycle history and marked on her intake chart.

Can barn staff record farrowings and matings on a phone?

Yes. Farrowing, heat, mating, and culling all record on a phone in the barn and update the sow card and your KPIs as the events are logged.

See Sow & Breeding on your operation.

20 minutes, tailored to how you run.

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