Aggression in replacement grower and finisher gilts fed a short-term high-tryptophan diet and the effect of long-term human–animal interaction

Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Welfare by admin on January 16, 2009 | No Comments

Aggression can be a major problem for swine production as it negatively impacts the pigs’ health and welfare. Increasing tryptophan (TRP) intake to raise brain serotonin (5-HT)—key for aggression control, and long-term positive social handling can reduce stress in pigs. Objective was to feed a short-term high-TRP diet to grower (3 months) and finisher (6 months) maternal gilts that were either socially handled or not and measure their behavioural activity and aggressiveness. Eight pens of six unrelated gilts were split into two blocks balanced for litter, social handling (non- vs. handled) and dietary treatment (control vs. high-TRP). Social-handling was applied three times per week, from day 45 until 6 months of age. At 3 months, two handled and two non-handled pens were assigned to control while the other four pens were assigned to the high-TRP diet fed ad libitum for 7 days (days 1–7). At 6 months of age, pen assignment to dietary treatments was swapped. Body weights and blood were taken at days 1 (pre-feeding) and 7. Blood samples were analyzed for TRP and 5-HT concentrations using high pressure liquid chromatography. Behaviour was recorded from days 1 to 5 and scan-sampling used to determine time-budget behaviours and postures in a 12-h period each day (06:00–18:00 h). Aggression evaluation in the home pen focused on counts of agonistic interactions, bites and head-knocks per interaction during three, 30-min intervals (08:00, 12:00, and 16:00 h) from days 1 to 5. Resident–intruder (R–I) test was carried out for a maximum of 300 s at days 6 and 7 to measure aggressiveness, predicted by the latency to the first attack and attack outcomes. A 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of dietary treatment and social handling within age was analyzed by repeated measures of mixed models and Tukey adjustments. The TRP-added diet raised blood TRP concentration of 3- and 6-month-old gilts by 180.7% and 85.2% respectively (P < 0.05), reduced behavioural activity and time spent standing, while increasing lying behaviour, mostly in grower gilts (P < 0.05). High-TRP diet reduced the number of agonistic interactions, and aggressiveness in 3-month-old gilts, which took longer to attack the intruder pig, and displayed fewer attacks on the first day of testing (P < 0.05). Long-term positive social handling improved growth performance and had a slight effect on behaviour (P < 0.05). Provision of enhanced TRP diet reduced behavioural activity and aggressiveness of grower gilts, and these results are likely mediated by activation of brain serotonergic system. Short-term high-TRP dietary supplementation may be used to reduce aggression at mixing in young pigs.

For more information the full article can be found at http://journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/applan/issues

Improving Production Efficiency in a Competitive Industry

Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Swine Innovation by admin on January 10, 2009 | No Comments

This paper takes an in-depth look at how to improve production efficiency in hog operations by improving sow management practices and genetic management. Three different areas are looked at and shown how improvements can increase production efficiency. The first area covered is sow and guilt management. Currently about half of sows are culled while only producing about 30-40 piglets in their life time, furthermore about 20% of sows are culled while not even giving birth. Better selection of gilts is one way to improve this, selecting gilts based on weight has proven to be a more effective strategy than based on age.  Improving guilt and sow management practices can have great benefits to an operations efficiency if attention is paid to all the small details. Some targets that should be the goal of any operation are: greater than 86% farrowing rates, greater than 12.5 total piglets born, greater than 70% of gilts served farrowing the 3rd litter, and 50 pigs weaned lifetime. The second topic focuses on the variability in grow-finish performance that can be linked back to birth weight. It is stated that growth rate after birth has already been pre-programmed before the pig is even born, this becomes most evident in the grow finish stage. Sorting pigs in the nursery and grow stage will not resolve variation in growth performance , it is still a characteristic of individual pigs and litters. The paper argues that recognizing and managing differences in birth weight and post natal growth between litters has the potential to cut costs in the immediate future. The third topic covered was the need to improve the genetic impact of elite sires. The overall production efficiency of the herd is dependent on the reproductive capacity of the boars used for mating, and the genetic merit of those boars. Because the pork industry will use one boar to breed hundreds of sows, if that boar has poor genetics it will impact thousands of pigs. Better management of genetic factors have the ability to improve overall production efficiency and help producers become more competitive.

Hog house tomatoes

Posted in: Energy by admin on January 1, 2009 | No Comments

The need to safely dispose of manure from concentrated animal feeding operations is resulting in some imaginative approaches. One North Carolina hog producer thinks one approach might be to attach a commercial greenhouse operation to the hog business, where a portion of the liquid manure is used to generate another cash crop – in this case, tomatoes. Why tomatoes? Barham chose tomatoes because he felt they would absorb a higher volume of treated wastewater than other vegetable crops. The farm installed a Caterpillar 3406 engine with a 120-kilowatt generator to
burn the biogas coming off the digester to generate electricity. The engine is capable of handling gas containing significant amounts of hydrogen sulfide, so nothing is done to clean the biogas before it is burned. For odor control, wastewater diverted to the farm’s greenhouses and hog barn manure pits undergoes a biological nitrification process.

Effects of Environmental Regulation on Economic Activity and Pollution in Commercial Agriculture

Posted in: Economics by admin on | No Comments

Because new technologies have enabled livestock production’s increasing mobility, the industry is now able to locate in regions not traditionally conducive to production, creating the opportunity to study legislative effects on location. This paper considers a specific set of state policies to examine the effects of environmental regulations in the agricultural sector. Because new technologies have enabled livestock production’s increasing mobility, the industry is now able to locate in regions not traditionally conducive to production, creating the opportunity to study legislative effects on location. This paper considers a specific set of state policies to examine the effects of environmental regulations in the agricultural sector.

What swine flu really teaches the world

Posted in: Economics by admin on | No Comments

Evaluation of recombinant Bhlp29.7 as an ELISA antigen for detecting pig herds with swine dysentery

Posted in: Welfare by admin on | No Comments

Diagnosis of Swine dysentery (SD) traditionally has relied on detecting the spirochaete in the faeces of acutely
affected pigs. To date simple and reliable serological assays that can be applied as a diagnostic tool at the herd level have not been available. In the current study a recombinant histidine tagged 29.7 kDa lipoprotein of B. hyodysenteriae (His6-Bhlp29.7) was used as an ELISA plate-coating antigen. It was found that when used on sets of 40 sera from slaughter-aged pigs the His6-Bhlp29.7 ELISA as established proved to be a useful adjunct to the diagnosis of SD at the herd level.

For more information the full article can be found at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03781135

Use of different cooling systems by pregnant sows in experimental pen

Posted in: Welfare by admin on | No Comments

Literature suggests that pregnant sows are able to select the types of cooling they prefer in the pen. This hypothesis was tested by comparing different cooling regimes. A fixed group of four pregnant sows was selected; six cycles of observations were carried out during summer. Inside the pen, four areas were selected and treated with different regimes; not cooled, cooled with an airstream, cooled with an airstream and water on the floor, and cooled with water on the floor. The use of the different areas by the sows was monitored in relation to air temperature and the temperature–humidity index [Ingram D L (1965). Evaporative cooling in the pig. Nature, 207, 415–416.].

The presence of the sows in the cooled areas became more important with increasing temperature. Below a temperature of 22°C, areas that were not cooled, or were cooled solely by an airstream, were favoured. The occupancy of the area that was solely cooled by an airstream tended to increase up to a temperature of 30°C, when the area cooled by
water and an airstream was favoured. The use of the solely water-cooled area increased with temperature, especially with high temperatures.

It was concluded that the behaviour of the sows, in terms of which area of the pen they occupied, was a function of air temperature. During the day, there appeared to be threshold temperatures above which sows moved to areas that they found more comfortable. 

For more information the full article can be found at  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/15375110

The Science behind the Issues in Animal Welfare

Posted in: Welfare by admin on | No Comments

For most animal welfare concerns there is at least some degree of overlap among the different viewpoints. When measures arising from different viewpoints lead to the same conclusions it is much easier to reach consensus in interpretation. This is especially true when reduced productivity corresponds with other measures, since the evidence also provides economic incentive for alleviating a welfare concern. Most recommendations for floor space allowance for growing-finishing pigs, for example, are based on measures of productivity (Gonyou, et al 2006). However, productivity rates do not always correspond with other measures of welfare – for example when a lame sow who finds it painful to stand or walk delivers and weans a large, healthy litter of piglets. In many respects, intense selection for high levels of  production has created a mismatch between productivity and other aspects of biological fitness. For example, breeding sows have to be feed-restricted in order to maintain high reproductive rates, yet they show signs of chronic hunger on the diets commonly provided. There are also examples where selection for fast lean growth has also led to producing pigs that may be more aggressive, more difficult to handle or are more susceptible to handling stress. Disagreements
among the viewpoints, especially when different scientific measures conflict lead to the most contentious debates concerning animal welfare.

BOARD-INVITED REVIEW: The use and application of distillers dried grains with solubles in swine diets

Posted in: Production by admin on | No Comments

Distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) may be included in diets fed to pigs in all phases of production. The concentrations of DE and ME in DDGS are similar to those in corn. This paper concludes that DDGS can be included in
diets fed to growing pigs in all phases of production, beginning at 2 to 3 wk postweaning, in concentrations of
up to 30% DDGS, and lactating and gestating sows can be fed diets containing up to 30 and 50%, respectively,
without negatively affecting pig performance.

For more information the full article can be found at http://jas.fass.org/

Rethinking the way we load pigs

Posted in: Production by admin on | No Comments

Powerpoint Presentation, presented at the 2009 Livestock Transportation Conference. Claims loading system results indicate that pigs loaded on the P chute during the FP have fewer total deads and total losses.