Characteristics of erythropoiesis in sows during different periods of the production cycle

Abstract

The tactics of periodic monitoring of the hematology of sows allows timely measures to prevent anemia, which inevitably occurs, since the targeted screening and selection of industrial breeds are aimed at multiple births, which increases the risks of anemia during pregnancy and suckling period. With periodic and constant monitoring, it is possible to deduce individual reference intervals of hematological indicators for a particular animal and control the response to compensatory measures that directly affects the yield of viable piglets and their survival rate. The purpose of this study was to study the number of red blood cells, hemoglobin level, hematocrit, average volume of red blood cells and erythrocyte indices depending on the production cycle of the sow. The groups were formed from sows on the 80th day of pregnancy (group 1, n=5), after farrowing (group 2, n=5) and before weaning piglets (group 3, n=5). The Vet ABCTM analyzer (Horiba Medical Poland) was used. Counting of reticulocytes by “supravital staining” with a solution of “brilliant cresyl blue”. Statistical processing in the Microsoft Excel program (Data Analysis package), evaluation of the reliability of differences based on the Mann—Whitney U criterion. As a result, it was found that the average volume of red blood cells increases with a decrease in their number and hemoglobin concentration, which is quite natural and indicates a regenerative response with the appearance of reticulocytes in the blood. The correlation coefficient between erythrocytes and the average volume of erythrocytes was r=-0.53 (r2=0.28, p=0.01), between the average volume of erythrocytes and reticulocytes r=-0.50 (r2=0.25, p=0.05). There were no significant differences among the groups in reticulocytes and the average volume of erythrocytes. The dynamics and intensity of regeneration are moderate in all three groups.