Zinpro Corporation, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-performance organic trace minerals and animal nutrition solutions, has launched the Zinpro Sow Excellence Index.
Supported by one of the world’s largest sow-focused databases, the company developed the index utilising data from more than 30,000 individual sow assessments across multiple countries and continents.
Designed to prove a correlation between claw lesions and sow productivity, the index allows producers to catch issues early before they impact pig performance, the company said.
“Claw lesions are a silent problem with loud consequences,” said Dr. Lucas Rodrigues, from Zinpro Swine Research and Discovery. “Our multivariate analysis revealed that sows with poor claw health such as heel overgrowth and white line lesions consistently underperform in farrowing metrics. The Zinpro Sow Excellence Index empowers producers to act earlier, not later,” he said.
Using the Lesion Index (L-Index), a standardised way to measure lesion severity and frequency, the index establishes benchmarks that can be used to evaluate herd health and longevity. Pig producers worldwide can now benchmark their farms against a global dataset and receive customized L-Index reports through a Zinpro Feet First evaluation.
The index then reveals how claw health directly correlates with productivity, longevity and welfare, turning lesion scores into ‘actionable insights for herd performance’.
Checking for claw lesions takes less than a minute per sow and can be built into a routine check to assess sows during lactation. If lesions are identified, producers can quickly adjust nutrition, housing or management to limit lost performance, the company said.
From symptom to signal
“The Zinpro Sow Excellence Index transforms claw lesion scoring from a diagnostic tool into a strategic production indicator,” said Dr Ton Kramer, Zinpro South America business manager. “It empowers producers and technicians to act early to benchmark production, allowing them to improve sow longevity and performance.”
He said the index offers the following benefits to producers:
- Provides early warning before lameness hits to bolster herd health
- Quantifies monitoring through advanced data analysis and supports better decision-making for swine production systems
- Links predictive insights to lifetime productivity, enabling systems to quantify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter most
- Strengthens welfare credibility and reinforces the Zinpro commitment to sustainability.