Swine manure composition affects the biochemical origins, composition, and accumulation of odorous compounds

Posted in: Environment by admin on January 1, 2003 | No Comments

The effect of starter feeding regimen on variability in bodyweight and performance in the nursery

Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on | No Comments

Variability in growth and performance is a concern to pork producers due to the associated negative impact on revenues and expenditures. This experiment was designed to determine the effect of starter program on the variability in animal weights at nursery exit. Treatments consisted of 4 starter programs, formulated and fed according to manufacturers’ specifications from weaning (d 0) to nursery exit (d 50). Overall ADG was similar between programs, however, the ADFI differed thus, feed efficiency was affected by the program used. Variability in pig growth, determined as the coefficient of variation, was not affected by starter program. This was true regardless of the starting weight of the group of pigs. Therefore, although performance may be affected slightly by the use of a specific starter program, the change in performance is uniform across a group; and the variability in body weight at nursery exit will not be affected.

Sorting Pigs: Why We Do It, and Why We Shouldn’t

Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on | No Comments

In swine management we have the opportunity to determine the social groupings of our animals. We determine which pigs are in the same pen, and which pigs are not. This process will be referred to as sorting. With increasing farm size, more pigs may be selected from in order to form a group, allowing the implementation of very effective sorting strategies. Within the industry there is a general consensus that sorting is important in order to achieve maximum productivity. However, in a more intensive production system there are many situations where a sorting strategy may not apply. Historical systems in which pigs were limit fed on the floor were subject to dominance related problems. Sorting by weight is a means of reducing dominance related variation in production. This practice will be effective if resources (such as feed) are limited and easily defendable. Such conditions exist in groups of gestating sows if they are not individually fed. Grower-finisher pigs are generally fed ad libitum and do not benefit from sorting by weight. Restricted space allowances do not lend themselves to defence, and so all pigs experience a reduction in growth within crowded pens. Sorting on the basis of nutritional needs can be effective, and leads to sorting grower-finisher pigs by sex, and newly-weaned pigs by size in order to provide the best diets to each group.

Nursery Management: Hygiene and Feeding Management Practices to Ensure Healthy Pigs

Posted in: Welfare by admin on | No Comments

Intestinal diseases are still a problem with nursery-aged pigs. Good hygiene practices are essential for minimizing disease, and this includes running all-in-all-out and washing/sanitization. Barns should be built with materials that are easy to clean. This involves smooth surfaces because of the fact that more infectious organic matter can be lodged in crevices in rough surfaced materials. Dampening the room before high-powered washing can sustain the fecal matter and make removal easier. Proper disinfection should follow immediately after washing to help minimize such diseases as PCV2. Dipping in boot baths along is not suffice; boots need to be scrubbed and cleaned prior to disinfecting in the boot bath.

Three basic rules for a nursery pigs nutritional program include: 1) Start with as heavy a pig as possible. Due to the industry weaning early, the heavier and older pigs tend to grow faster and do better health-wise. 2) Feed as simple diets as possible. This includes lowest-cost feed (to an extent), which can include soybean and grains. The pigs energy feed intake must be maximized (by use of ingredients such as fats) and we make sure that the ingredients used are digestible by the piglets. Supplementing nursery diets with 3000 ppm Zinc Oxide post-weaning has also been observed to have beneficial effects in helping control post-weaning E. coli infections. 3) Focus on nursery feeding management. Adding fiber or restricting feed intake are not viable options for controlling intestinal disease. Feeders need to be adjusted properly as to not allow too much or too little, both of which cases can increase the chance of intestinal disease. Approximately 25 to 50% of the feeding pan should be visible in the first few days after weaning.

Cattle discriminate between individual familiar herd members ion a learning experiment

Posted in: Welfare by admin on | No Comments

This study was conducted to determine if cattle could discriminate between two familiar herdmates. The ability to discriminate is necessary for animals to form affiliative relationships (friendships) with other cattle in their herd. It is also helpful, although perhaps not essential, for the formation of stable social structures or hierarchies within the herd. Six heifers were used and trained to distinguish between two herdmates in a Y-maze. Approaching one herdmates resulted in a reward, while approaching the other did not. All of the cattle quickly learned which animal was linked to the reward, indicating that some form of discrimination occurred. When animals were given a second task, of learning the discriminate between two additional herdmates, they were slower to learn the task. There appeared to be some carryover effect that caused confusion in the animals. This is a fairly basic study examining the basis for social behaviour in herds of cattle, but nonetheless produced some unexpected results in that the second test took longer than the first.

Individual differences in responses of piglets to weaning at different ages.

Posted in: Welfare by admin on | No Comments

Eight litters were studied from birth to 37 days of age. The effects of weaning on the physiological responses of each piglet within the litter were examined, with focus being on the effects of relative weight and weaning age on piglet responses. Four litters were weaned at 21 days of age, while the other four litters were weaned at 35 days of age. On the day of weaning, the piglets were moved to a separate weaning room and placed in straw-bedded pens with a heated creep box, a water bowl, and a 3-space feeder. They were allowed ad libitum access to both feed and water. Data on weight gain, behaviour, and salivary cortisol levels (as an indicator of stress) were collected throughout the study. In general, during the pre-weaning period, heavier pigs were more likely to occupy the sow’s front teats during suckling, they were more likely to make low-pitched vocalizations, they carried out less nosing behaviour, and they were more aggressive than lighter pigs. Similar results were found at weaning for the heavier pigs. Those pigs having heavier weaning weights had occupied the sow’s front teats most during suckling (pre-weaning). Heavier pigs made less high-pitched and more low-pitched vocalizations after weaning, and they continued to be more aggressive. As a result, heavier piglets experienced higher cortisol levels. During the first two days after weaning, there was an increase in high-pitched vocalizations for pigs weaned at 21 days. Frequency of low-pitched vocalizations increased for both treatments on the first day after weaning. Aggression, nosing and chewing behaviours, and cortisol levels were highest on the first day after weaning. Aggression and cortisol levels among pigs weaned earlier decreased faster than for pigs weaned later. Earlier weaning was more stressful than later weaning for both small and large pigs. However, the challenges they have to endure appear to differ. Larger pigs seemed to have more difficulty adapting to their nutritional demands. Smaller pigs may have more difficulty adapting to maternal separation, as they had received less milk during lactation.

Human-animal interactions in livestock production

Posted in: Welfare by admin on | No Comments

Human-animal interactions are inevitable in intensive production systems. Understanding the effects of this relationship has improved over the past 20 years, but there are still questions to be answered. Handling studies have indicated that fear of humans negatively affects productivity and welfare parameters in most livestock species. Stress responses that result from fear of humans have been implicated in limiting performance. The fear of humans may also result because of the attitude and behaviour of stockpeople. Fear of humans can make animals more prone to injuries, more likely to experience acute and chronic stress (which could lead to immunosuppression, possibly compromising the animal’s health). Also, if the stockperson has a poor attitude, they could be less diligent in ensuring the needs of the animals are met. Therefore, it seems logical that if the attitudes and behaviour of stockpeople could be improved, then the animal’s fear would decrease and welfare and productivity would increase. But, attitudes that have been developed and instilled over many years are difficult to change. However, research has shown that there are modification techniques (for behaviour and attitude) that do result in improvement. Perhaps there are better selection criteria that could be used when hiring stockpeople. For example, it has been found that attitudes towards some job-related variables (apart from the animal work) are related to attitudes towards pigs. Certain personality characteristics have been found to be correlated with job productivity. There are many areas of research that still require investigation. There is some evidence suggesting that the negative effects of some housing conditions and husbandry procedures are improved through positive handling procedures. This provides further support for the importance of human factors on animal welfare. Most research has focused on the effects of physical interactions. Less attention has focused on more subtle visual (eg. stockperson’s posture and movement) and auditory (eg. shouting or clanging metal) interactions. However, some research has shown these factors to strongly influence the animal’s behaviour. Some research has suggested that exposing animals to positive human interactions or a rewarding experience (eg. food) during negative husbandry procedures can decrease the severity of the pain or fear experienced. Also, animals can make associations between a negative procedure and where and by whom it is performed. Therefore, if the regular stockperson wore a different color while performing the procedure, the animal might not associate the procedure with the person, thereby decreasing the fear of the regular handler. Stockpeople have a significant impact on the welfare and productivity of livestock. Training programs can aid in improving the attitudes and behaviour of stockpeople towards animals. More research is needed to understand not only the effect of tactile interactions, but also auditory and visual interactions. The effects of rewarding human-animal interactions also requires more research.

Navigational ability in the domestic fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus).

Posted in: Welfare by admin on | No Comments

There is little information available about domestic fowls’ ability to navigate, therefore, it is also unknown how chicks orient themselves and represent space in non-cage systems. By using the sun as the chicks’ only visual cue, as that is what they typically would base movement on in the wild, the chicks ability to locate food was used to investigate their spatial memory abilities. Outdoors, an octagon test arena was used. At the end of each arm was a pot and one was randomly chosen to hold a food reward each test. The majority of the chicks moved towards the arm that contained the food reward, and it did appear that they used the sun to position themselves within the octagon. Thus, the chicks did use spatial memory maneuver around the octagon to obtain the hidden food reward, by using the sun as a cue.

A Facility for Controlled Exposure of Pigs to Airborne Dusts and Gases

Posted in: Production by admin on | No Comments

A facility has been developed for a study in which, for 6 weeks, groups of weaner pigs (960 in total) were exposed to controlled concentrations of airborne dust (nominally 0, 2
5, 5 or 10 mgm3 inhalable fraction) and ammonia (nominally 0, 10, 20 or 40 parts per million, ppm) and the effects on production and respiratory disease measured. The facility comprised five rooms, each holding 24 pigs. Each room was ventilated mechanically at a constant rate of either 30 or 40 air changes per hour in the Winter and Summer, respectively, to minimise the background concentration of pollutants. An artificial pig dust has been developed, though setting the specifications for composition, particle size distribution and microbial content was hampered by the lack of published values for these parameters. The dust was manufactured from feed, barley straw and faeces, mixed by weight in the proportions 0
5:0
1:0
4. The ingredients were oven dried to inactivate microbes and remove moisture and oil binders, milled by a hammer mill and then an air classifier mill, and mixed. This dust
was then injected into the supply air of each roomvia a venturi nozzle fed froman agitated hopper. The size distribution of this dust approximated published values for piggery dust. The dust concentration was monitored with a tribo-electric sensor, which was calibrated against an aerodynamic particle sizer and gravimetric samplers. Ammonia was also injected into the supply air; its rate was controlled with mass flow controllers and its concentration was measured continuously with a NO chemiluminescence gas analyser after catalytic conversion of NH3 to NO at 7508C. The monitoring and control system was controlled by a computer, which included a safety system to terminate pollutant generation if set limits are exceeded. The facility has been used successfully and two batches of pigs have been tested satisfactorily.

Bugs, Drugs and You

Posted in: Production by admin on | No Comments

The concern with antibiotics is that the organism the drug is supposed to kill may develop a resistance to the drug and make it more difficult or maybe impossible to treat. This resistant disease can then be spread to others. Some microbes can even transfer from animal to man (called zoonosis). In Canada and elsewhere, we use antimicrobial drugs to treat sick animals, prevent disease, and to enhance production. This contributes to safe and wholesome food from healthy animals, reducing human exposure to pathogens, promoting health and well being of animals, and reducing the cost of food production. The increase in demand for food animal products will result in an increased demand for animal health management tools (including antimicrobials). The Veterinary Drugs Directorate is beginning to look past the chemical residues in meat to include microbial safety. Some needs include a coordinated surveillance system for antimicrobial resistance in the major pathogens affecting food animals, regulation of antimicrobials to consider the human health impacts of resistance, and to assess federal and provincial jurisdiction regarding the sale and use of antimicrobials in animals. An on farm food safety program should be designed to address antimicrobial issues. The Animal Nutrition Association of Canada has developed a HACCP based program that has audit controls for its members, commercial feed manufacturers. The CFIA is in the process of establishing a mandatory HACCP-based regulation for the manufacture of medicated feed on farm and in commercial mills.