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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:
Stepping and kicking behaviour during milking in relation to response in human-animal interaction test and clinical health in loose housed dairy cows.
Posted in: Welfare by admin on January 1, 2004 | No Comments
The purpose of this study was to clarify relations of cows’ kicking and stepping behaviours during milking. It is hypothesized that the cows’ possible kicking and stepping response during milking may be related to the quality of human-animal relationship in general. Further, it is suggested that lameness and ticks causing pain, which is aggravated by the milking procedure, will cause cows to step or kick during milking. Using data from 10 commercial dairy herds, we have investigated the possible relations between the cows’ behaviour expressions during one milking and their response to an approaching human in the loose housing system as well as their behavioural response during clinical examination, their clinical health status and their getting up-behaviour. Results showed a general herd effect on occurrence of stepping and kicking behaviour during milking. In general, stepping during milking was associated positively to daily milk yield. However, low yielding cows showing avoidance behaviour at the clinical examination were also more likely to step during milking. Furthermore, stepping during milking was positively associated to avoidance in a human approach test as well as occurrence of ticks, and cows with tick lesions that further avoided human approach were most likely to step during milking. Cows with teat lesions were more likely to kick during milking, especially if they did not avoid human approach. The analysis showed no relation between lameness and kicking or stepping behaviour during milking.
The effects of hen vocalizations on chick feeding behaviour
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The productivity and welfare of broilers chicks was examined when hens calls were played at the feeder. Fifty-two chicks were housed in 16 pens. For three minutes every hour, 8 of the broiler pens heard hen feeding calls, while the control pens were not played any vocalizations. The experiment ended on the 9th day of age. However, the feed intake and growth was measured on 17, 24, 31 and 38 days of age and the carcass yield was measured when the broilers were 40 days old. During the experiment, the chicks that received the hen’s vocalizations had improved feed conversion ratios and weighed more. When the chicks were observed on 1, 4 and 7 days of age, the chicks that heard the hen vocalizations situated themselves significantly closer to the speaker than the chicks not hearing hen vocalizations. The behaviour of the chicks suggests that they are attracted to the sound of the hens vocalizations, as they remain relatively close to the speaker. There was not a difference between the two treatments, once the hen vocalizations ceased, in terms of body weight, feed efficiency and carcass yield. Therefore, the advantages obtained from the playback of hen vocalizations up to the ninth day of age where not evident once the playbacks ended. This study has proven that playing hen vocalizations to chicks is benefits the productivity (increased body weight and improved feed efficiency) of chicks during the first nine days of production.
Identifying the true value of effective replacement gilt
Posted in: Production by admin on | No Comments
Sow replacement rate is very high in many farms, which leads to an increase in need for replacement gilts. Therefore it should be a goal to improve gilt management to increase breeding herd productivity and reduce the amount of replacements needed. Time should be put into improving current gilt programs. With good management of gilt replacement, it is possible to improve labor efficiency and space usage. Three keys to good gilt replacement are: 1) Effective selection program to identify 75 to 80% of the most fertile animals; 2) Achieving adequate body condition at first mating; and 3) Minimizing non-productive days.
Selection should include 3 stages. Stage 1 should be implemented when the gilts leave the nursery. Here gilts can be checked for growth rate and 12 to 14 teats. Stage 2 should entail weight, growth rate, and back fat depth. Here, they MUST have a growth rate of 0.6 kg/day, teats should be rechecked, and hernias or ruptures should be checked for. Stage 3 should be the beginning of puberty induction. This helps to reduce the amount of days until puberty (reduce non-productive days).
Early puberty induction allows the identification of prolific gilts. Non-select gilts are gilts that do not show sexual maturity at 180 days of age. They will have poorer reproductive performance throughout their life. Proper stimulation via boar helps to identify those 75 to 80% of gilts mentioned earlier. It is suggested that puberty induction begin at 160 days of age until first estrus OR until 190 days of age. The weight target at first breeding is 135 to 150 kg. This ensures that gilts have proper body conditioning in order to lead a quality reproductive life, as well as reduce non-productive days.
Warming up for C.O.O.L.: Canadian Response
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Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) has been a household name in the food sector for roughly two years and is basically now law. As of October 2004 (in the USA anyways), COOL is mandatory (law), implementation was about 2 billion USD, industry stakeholders had their input heard, and more concerning the passage of COOL into law. Reasons for supporting COOL include the fact that people have a right to know where their food came from and may pay a premium for meat of a different origin. This theory is flawed, and many think that politicians that have no real understanding of agriculture and economics passed COOL into law. In conclusion, COOL is a shortsighted attempt by anti-trade members in the US to construct a complex and costly trade barrier to trade in livestock and red meat. There is little economic merit other than consumer rights, even though consumers indicate they have no interest in the origin. The poultry industry is excluded from this, which helps it due to the fact that the costs of COOL would be highest for pork and beef.
Feeding High-Fat Oats to Swine
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The performance of pigs fed diets based on oat is typically poorer than that of pigs fed diets based on higher energy cereal grains. The reason for this is that oat provides approximately 10% less digestible energy than barley and about 20% less digestible energy than wheat and corn due to its high fibre content. The fibre itself is not digestible and its presence also impairs the digestibility of energy and other nutrients contained in the grain. Current recommendations regarding the incorporation of oat into rations fed to growing-finishing swine suggest that their inclusion should be limited to less than 20%. However, these recommendations are based largely on experiments conducted in excess of 25 years ago. Considerable improvement has been made in oat varieties during this period, especially in terms of lower % hull. The results of the present experiment indicate that both normal and high fat oats can substitute for barley at levels as high as 50% of the diet without hindering pig performance. A breeding project was recently undertaken at the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre to develop a high-fat oat for use in livestock feeding. Feeding this recently developed high-fat oat to pigs improved growth rate and efficiency of feed conversion when compared with normal-fat oat. Nutrient digestibility also improved with no negative effects on carcass quality. These results provide a strong indication that high-fat oat is superior to normal-fat oat as an energy source for swine. There appears to be greater potential to utilize oat, regardless of fat level, in rations fed to growing-finishing pigs than is currently being achieved. The agronomic properties of high-fat oat are still being tested at the Crop Development Centre and they are not currently available for commercial feeding. However, in the future, high-fat oats may provide swine producers with an alternative energy source that can be successfully incorporated into rations fed to swine.
Growth performance of pigs fed hand-chopped sugar cane stalks
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Production responses of weaned pigs after chronic exposure to airborne dust and ammonia.
Posted in: Environment by admin on | No Comments
Nine hundred and sixty weaned pigs were exposed for 5.5 weeks to controlled concentrations of airborne dust and ammonia in a single, multi-factorial experiment. Production and health responses were measured but only the former are reported here. The treatments were a dust concentration of either 1.2, 2.7, 5.1 or 9.9 mg/m3 (inhalable fraction) and an ammonia concentration of either 0.6, 10.0, 18.8 or 37.0 p. p. m., which are representative of commercial conditions. The experiment was carried out over 2.5 years and pigs were used in eight batches, each comprising five lots of 24 pigs. Each treatment combination was replicated once and an additional control lot (nominally approx.0 mg/m3 dust and approx.0 p. p. m. ammonia) was included in each batch to provide a baseline. The dust concentration was common across the other four lots in each batch in which all four ammonia concentrations were used; thus the split-plot design was more sensitive to the effects of ammonia than dust. The pigs were kept separately in five rooms in a purpose-built facility. The pollutants were injected continuously into the air supply. Ammonia was supplied from a pressurized cylinder and its concentration was measured with an NOx chemiluminescent gas analyser after catalytic conversion. The endogenous dust in each room was supplemented by an artificial dust, which was manufactured from food, barley straw and faeces, mixed by weight in the proportions 0.5:0.1:0.4. The ingredients were oven-dried, milled and mixed and this artificial dust was then resuspended in the supply air. Dust concentration was monitored continuously with a tribo-electric sensor and measured continually with an aerodynamic particle sizer and gravimetric samplers. Live weight per pig and cumulative food intake per pen of 12 pigs were measured after 5.5 weeks of exposure. Exposure to both aerial pollutants depressed live weight relative to the control (control v. pollutant, 25.7 v. 25.0 (s.e.d.=0.33) kg, P=0.043) and there was a trend for food intake to be lower for pollutant-exposed pigs (control v. pollutant 292 v. 280 (s.e.d.=7.1) kg per pen, P=0.124). The reduction in live weight and food intake was dependent upon the concentration of dust (mean across all ammonia concentrations for increasing dust concentration; live weight 25.3, 26.4, 24.0 and 24.5 (s.e.d.=0.65) kg, P=0.081; food intake 295, 316, 248 and 263 (s.e.d.=14.3) kg per pen, P=0.016) but not ammonia (mean across all dust concentrations for increasing ammonia concentration; live weight 24.4, 25.1, 25.3 and 25.3 (s.e.d.=0.41) kg, P=0.158; food intake 279, 275, 288 and 279 kg (s.e.d.=9.0) kg per pen, P=0.520). There was an interaction between dust and ammonia for live weight (P=0.030) but the effects were complicated and may have been the result of a type I error. There was no interaction for food intake (P=0.210). In general, both food intake and live-weight gain, but not food conversion efficiency, were lower for weaned pigs exposed to 5.1 and 9.9 mg/m3 dust concentrations compared with 1.2 and 2.7 mg/m3 treatments. Other measures of production were also analysed and supported the overall interpretation that dust concentrations of 5.1 mg/m3 and higher depress performance. This study is the first to quantify the effects of chronic exposure to common aerial pollutants on the performance of weaned pigs. The results suggest that dust concentrations of 5.1 or 9.9 mg/m3 (inhalable fraction) across ammonia concentrations up to 37 p.p.m. adversely affect performance. The commercial significance of these findings depends on the financial benefits of the superior production at low dust concentrations relative to the cost of providing air of this quality.
DE: air-pollutants; air-pollution; ammonia-; dust-; exposure-; feed-conversion-efficiency; feed-intake; liveweight-gain