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

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.