Tips for Improving Returns

Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on January 1, 2004 | No Comments

Introduction
The following checklist of cost saving and revenue generating ideas focuses on immediate payback with minimal or no investment in capital improvements. It is understood that changes to breeding herd management, health status and equipment purchases such as wet/dry feeders would add further to the potential savings but because of their longer-term or strategic role in your business are considered fixed for the present discussion.

Feed budgeting
Most feeding programs today are based on a feed budget – or should be. Fundamentally, a feed budget defines the performance expected on a particular farm and builds a feeding program designed to achieve it. In its simplest form, a feed budget defines the quantity of each diet to be fed to each pig and the cost of that diet. A feed budget can therefore be used to monitor actual – as opposed to expected – feed usage. Both functions – feeding program development and monitoring of results – can be extremely valuable to the individual producer.

Typically, certain assumptions have to be made with respect to feed intake, expected performance and variation in performance before specific diets can be formulated. Nonetheless, the development of a feed budget makes the feeding program farm specific and also lays out the basis for expected results. In terms of “surviving tough times,” the feed budget can help out in numerous ways.

A feed budget provides a foundation of expected performance. Actual measures of performance can be measured and compared with the expectations. If there is a shortfall in performance, corrective action can be taken. One might either alter the feed budget to reflect the reality of animal performance, or take action to address the shortfall in performance. Figure 1 illustrates the results of tracking a feed budget in a nursery and determining that insufficient quantities of the Phase 1 starter were being used. When the correction was made, the performance of the pigs, in terms of nursery exit weights, was profound. Nursery exit weight increased from 30.3 kg to 33.2 kg.

Shrinking Windows of Opportunity: Maximizing Packer Returns

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Many factors are affecting the swine industry, including record high feed prices, high Canadian dollar, drought, BSE, etc. All of these factors have resulted in a reduction of 5 to $10.00 per hog marketed. In order to find an adequate packer plant for an operation, several things need to be determined. Returns need to be investigated via sending a test load to the packer. This should be a representative load of an operations average or by generating a spreadsheet of settlement grids, bonus structures, and carcass information. With this, producers can model returns that can be seen from various packers. Ultimately, producers can keep an eye on individual marketing results over a prolonged period of time. Taking into account weight and lean yield distribution, loin size, demerits, freight (based on packer location), pool price, time period of study, and long run variations, producers can get a feel for which packer can provide the greatest profit for them.

Decision support system with semantic model to assess the risk of tail biting in pigs 1. 'Validation'.

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Tail biting is a behavioural problem with both welfare and economic consequences. Various conditions that may contribute to tail biting have been identified in a number of research reports. This paper examined those reports and extracted these causative factors. A weighting factor was developed for each of these contributing conditions, and a model developed to estimate the risk of tail biting in any housing/management system. The ability of the model to predict the relative level of tail biting in two environments was assessed using treatment comparisons reported in 12 scientific papers. In total, 77 pairs of treatments were assessed, and in 63 of these comparisons the model predicted the relative level of tail biting correctly. From this the authors conclude that the model may be a useful tool in assessing the risk for tail biting in pigs. Additional testing, with provision for further modification of the model, is required.

Locomotor behaviour in dairy calves, the use of demand functions to assess the effect of deprivation.

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Demand functions are used in an attempt to measure animal motivation. In the current study, demand functions were used to assess the effect of deprivation of locomotion on the motivation to perform locomotor behaviour in dairy calves. However, when animals are deprived, there is also a pause in testing, which may be confounded with the animals’ ability to respond to the operant task. The objective of this study was to determine if the motivation to perform locomotor behaviour was consistent when the pause in operant testing varied. More specifically, the authors wanted to determine if there was a decline in the calves’ ability to respond operantly for access to an exercise arena, where it could increase its locomotor behaviour. A long pause (4 days) and a short pause (1 day) in operant testing were compared. There were three fixed ratios (FR 8, 16, or 24), which indicate the number of times the calves have to press a lever to gain access to the exercise arena. The results indicated that a pause of 1 or 4 days in operant testing did not affect the demand function based on number of rewards per session or the demand function based on overall time calves spent galloping/bucking during the rewards. Also, the length of pause in operant testing did not affect the median latency to press the panel after entering the start box or the median interval between successive number of times pressing the panel. In conclusion, responding during operant sessions was not adversely affected by increasing the number of days from 1 to 4 between operant testing.

A comparison of the welfare and meat quality of veal calves slaughtered on the farm with those subjected to transportation and lairage.

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The behaviour, physiology and meat quality of 24-week-old veal calves that were either slaughtered at the veal unit (control) or transported 3 h while provided with 0.7 or 0.95 m2 per calf and 1.5h of lairage were compared. The heart rate of the transported calves was higher during travel and lairage than the levels seen in the control calves. The transported calves also had higher plasma cortisol concentrations immediately after the travel had ceased, but had returned to levels seen in the control following lairage. The plasma creatine kinase activity immediately following travel and after lairage was higher in transported calves. The calves were not observed lying during travel. Space allowance during travel did not affect the calves’ heart rate, plasma cortisol concentration nor the plasma creatine kinase activity. The difference in space allowance during transport did not affect the frequency of potentially traumatic events experienced by the calves. The calves that underwent transport did not have a higher incidence of carcass bruising and the muscle pH 24 hours post-slaughter was similar between the control and experimental groups. The handling associated with transport and transit itself were quite stressful for the calves, however transport did not impact the quality of the carcass.

Effect of maternal presence on the development of social relationships among lambs

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This study examined how ewes influence the development of their offspring’s relationships with other lambs. In the first experiment, twins lambs were either raised with their mother in small groups or separated from the dam after birth and raised together artificially. The amount of time a lamb chose to spend with a twin or familiar pen mate was used to determine the lamb’s preference. The assessment was conducted at four-weeks of age. The lambs reared with the dam would approach their twin first and spend significantly more time in contact with their twin than with a familiar lamb. The familiar lambs reared artificially did not discriminate between their twin and a familiar lamb. Therefore, the dam’s presence is required for the lambs capable of identifying their twin. The dam tends to act as the focus of the twin lambs and therefore may directly or indirectly affects the development of the relationship between the twins. In the second experiment, 4-week old mothered and artificially reared lambs were repeatedly exposed to a contact partner. The exposure lasted five days and the lambs were exposed to one another for approximately 14 hour during the evening and 5 hours during the day. The dam was absent during the exposure to the contact partner. The distinction between an unfamiliar individual and the contact partner was assessed. As well, the behaviour was observed when placed in a pen with their contact partner or an unfamiliar lamb. In this experiment, lambs did not prefer their contact partner or the unfamiliar lamb. When the lambs were paired up with their contact partner in the pen, the artificially reared lambs bleated significantly less than when they were housed with an unfamiliar lamb. Therefore, it appears that artificially reared lambs were capable of recognizing their partner. The inability of the dam-reared lambs to be able to discriminate between their contact partner and an unfamiliar lamb may have resulted from these lambs spending less time investigating their contact partner during the exposure period. It therefore appears that the dam affects their lamb’s ability to socialize with other lambs, even when they are not present during an encounter. As well, the dam plays an important role in the development of the relationship between siblings along with lambs of the same age.

Male rank order, space use and female attachment in large flocks of laying hens.

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Male dominance, space use and eventual female attachment to certain males were studied by direct observations of male and focal female birds. Males were present at an average ratio of 1:190 females and density was 7 birds/m2. The birds were observed for territorial, sexual and agonistic behaviours as well as daytime and night time roost locations. Rank order was determined based on crowings and matings. It was found that high-ranking males used the most available space, and there was a positive correlation between male rank order and space use. However, most of the males used more than half of the area. Maintenance of the dominance hierarchy was primarily maintained by low-ranking males avoiding high-ranking males. There did not appear to be a strong female attachment to specific males.

Group housing exerts a positive effect on the behaviour of young horses during training

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In this experiment 20 horses were handled according to a defined schedule in order to assess the effects of social environment and training on the human-animal relationship. 8 horses were housed singly and 12 horses were housed in 4 groups 3 horses. Horses were handled three times per week in 10 min sessions from an age of 6 months until 2 years of age during two winter periods. The training scheme involved leading, tying up, touching, lifting feet, etc. in 43 stages. The horses had to fulfil the performance criteria of each stage in order to get to the next stage. In the first winter period, horses were led to the stable when they had ‘passed’ a stage or after 10 min of training. In the second winter period, horses would start off at stage 1 again, and when they ‘passed’ a stage they went on to the next stage within the same training session. There was a significant difference between trainers in the number of times they allowed a horse to ‘pass’ a stage within each winter period. Group housed horses ‘passed’ more stages than single housed horses and singly housed horses bit the trainer more frequently than did group housed horses. From the responses of group housed horses to training, from this experiment it was apparent that there are clear benefits of raising young horses in groups.

Serological and virologic surveillance of swine influenza in China from 2000 to 2003

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Liquid Diets for Young Pigs: A “Solution” for Post-Weaning Morbidity and Mortality

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Piglet mortality and morbidity in the farrowing and nursery stages have shown little, if any, improvement in the past 10 years. Losses can be contributed to poor feed conversion, cost of treatments, and early weaning. Evidence shows that piglets can grow 70% faster on a liquid diet, which implies that sow milk production is not enough to sustain piglets at an older age. All milk-replacer contraptions must be cleaned and sanitized at regular intervals to minimize bacterial growth. This is why many milk replacements have been acidified; it helps to reduce bacterial growth.

Studies have shown that 18 day old pigs grow 2.3 times faster on milk replacement than pigs weaned straight to the nursery or left to suckle. These pigs gained more body fat, 10% more protein, and have a more developed small intestine. The difference is also significant in hotter temperatures.

Energy is the most difficult aspect of milk replacement. Much of the energy in sow milk comes from fat calories. Feed conversion is better in piglets fed high fat milk replacements than low fat replacements. A negative aspect of high fat replacement is an increase of amino acid oxidation (ultimately they excrete more). This results in less muscle deposition than piglets fed low fat replacement (most likely due to the low-fat feed piglets consuming more feed). Corn syrup solids (CSS) fed as a carbohydrate replacement to piglets had no effect on growth performance, feed conversion, or average daily feed intake. It can be a quality alternative to lactose (the main milk protein) in liquid milk replacement diets.