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Industry Partners
Prairie Swine Centre is an affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan
Prairie Swine Centre is grateful for the assistance of the George Morris Centre in developing the economics portion of Pork Insight.
Financial support for the Enterprise Model Project and Pork Insight has been provided by:
A method for assessing the relative sociability of individuals within groups: an example with grazing sheep.
Posted in: Welfare by admin on January 1, 2005 | No Comments
Sociability is defined as the tendency to be close to companions and can be quantified by calculating nearest neighbours. A method was developed to quantify relative sociability, which works well for animals that are housed in groups and are easily visible and identifiable. The time an animal spends as the nearest neighbour of other animals is scaled to have an expectation of 1.0 under the null hypothesis of random mixing, which is referred to as the sociability index. Nearest neighbours were identified based on being associated pairs (more often than expected by chance). Independent observation periods are tested for consistency. There were 8 groups of 7 sheep observed for 10, one-hour periods
CQA® and the New Medicated Feed Regulations
Posted in: Production by admin on | No Comments
Recently the CQA program was thoroughly reviewed. Changes have been made to the feeding perspective, which includes medicated feeding. There has been an entirely new chapter added that applies to on-farm mixers. There are new regulations set forth on producers obtaining licenses. For more information, refer to the full article.
Panel Presentation: Occupational Health & Safety Inspections
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OH&S exists to make workplaces safer, farms included. There are as many fatalities on the farm as there are in all other workplaces annually in Saskatchewan. The OH&S committee has committed to performing 300 agricultural workplace inspections per year. Items that may be included in these inspections is the workplace responsibility system (OH&S committee), worker training, regulations concerning the workplaces (such as environment, layout, etc.), personal protective equipment, and any dangerous heights (e.g. – feed bins). Hydrogen sulphide regulations can be reviewed, as can biological relations. This involves medications and/or hormones being used, the purpose for use, and conditions for administration (e.g. – is it safe to handle by pregnant workers?).
Implementing a Systematic Approach to Disease Control and Prevention
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As hog farms today move from small-scale to large-scale operations, disease control and prevention needs to be looked at from an overall point of view. The reactionary approach to disease control really only appears to be effective in high-health systems. The Product Based Approach utilizes well-marketed medications of the pharmaceutical companies to “prevent” disease. This makes producers feel secure in that they did everything they could to prevent disease. The current method that is under development is the Systematic Approach, which will be part of the business plan and/or budget. This approach looks at disease as a cost of production and diminished production. To control diseases one must educate the workers, define the background disease status, allow easier information management, and make decisions and take action. Specific disease risks must be taken into account and planned for as well. Investment in this type of system will eliminate excess costs and unnecessary drug use and decrease vulnerability to the impact of pathogens.
Definitions of Ambient Temperature Requirements for Pigs: A Review
Posted in: Production by admin on | No Comments
Pigs, like all animals, have an ability to live in a variety of thermal environments. Although pigs can adapt to some degree to different thermal environments, there is a cost to production associated with keeping them outside their comfort zone. During cold stress, pigs consume more feed to maintain their core body temperature (the temperature of their vital internal organs). The extra feed consumed is not used for body weight gain. On the other end of the scale, heat stress will reduce feed intake in the pig; production is reduced in the case of the lactating sow because of the reduction in milk production. It is also observed that pigs, heat stressed in the growing phase, are fatter. There are many factors, which influence the thermal environment of the pig. Some of the more obvious are the temperature outside the barn and artificial heating in the barn. Others that are less obvious include stocking density in the pen, type of flooring and feed intake; however, there are many more. Most of these factors can be manipulated in some way by the producer or by the pig itself to reduce the effects of thermal stress. Although there are values in books, which indicate the optimal temperature ranges for pigs of different body weights and production phases, being able to recognize signs of cold or heat stress in your pigs is the best way to adjust the set point temperature and ventilation rate in your barn rooms.
North America Moves Toward One Market
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Focus too much on the challenging issues that have faced North American agriculture over
the past several years and you might not notice an important long-term development: the agricultural
economies of Canada, Mexico, and the United States are increasingly behaving as if they
form one market. Not only is U.S. agricultural trade with Canada and Mexico on a clear upward
trend, but firms are reorganizing their activities around continental markets for both inputs and
outputs. For example, many North American pastures and feedlots contain animals that have
lived in more than one NAFTA country, and U.S. consumers are purchasing fresh tomatoes and
peppers produced by their neighbors both to the south and to the north.
Trade liberalization under the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CFTA, implemented in
1989) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, implemented in 1994) is just
one factor behind the growing integration of North American agriculture. To encourage this
trend, decisionmakers in both government and the private sector have pursued greater institutional
and policy coordination. Structural changes within agriculture have also facilitated
integration, as have continued population growth and sustained periods of economic expansion,
which have boosted consumer demand and forced new economic arrangements within
the agricultural and processed food industries.
Genetic parameters for carcass composition and pork quality estimated in a commercial production chain
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Consumer demands regarding food of animal origin
are of growing importance. As a consequence, traits referring to meat quality are of increasing relevance
for the pork industry. Therefore, the objective of this study is to estimate genetic parameters
for carcass and meat quality traits that are
of practical relevance in combination with information
from current or intended classification systems. It was found that selection for growth rate will have adverse consequences for meat quality based on
the high unfavorable correlations found between average
daily gain and most quality traits considered. Furthermore,
selection for growth rate is negatively correlated
with (sub)primal cut yield and will therefore not
automatically lead to increased cut weights. However,
selection towards increased carcass value by increasing
(sub)primal weights with improved quality will
clearly be feasible based on the correlations that were
found between most meat quality traits and (sub)primal
cuts.
The Effects of Air Injection on the Pipeline Transport of Cattle and Pig Slurries
Posted in: Environment by admin on | No Comments
(published in revised form 4 April 2005; published online 13 June 2005) A large-scale pipeline apparatus was used to investigate the effects of air injection on the properties of turbulent liquid flows in horizontal pipelines of different internal diameters (381, 508, 762 and 102 mm). The liquids included clean water, pig slurries with total solid concentrations up to 44% and dairy cattle slurries with total solid concentrations up to 55%. The superficial flow velocities were between 05 and 6 m/s and air injection rates ranged from 1 to 6% (v/v) at the point of injection.
Experimental data were collected in the form of corresponding values of flow rate and pressure gradient. These showed that air injection generally increased pressure gradients compared with the liquids flowing alone. However, inspection of the data indicated a tendency towards pressure gradient reductions if air is injected into cattle slurries containing more than 55% total solids.
It was shown that a simple linear model could represent the changes in pressure gradient brought about by air injection, and that this could provide a satisfactory procedure for the design of slurry pipelines with air injection.