Agronomic and Environmental Soil Phosphorus Testing in Soils Receiving Liquid Swine Manure

Posted in: Environment by admin on January 1, 2002 | No Comments

Is My Controller Adjusted for Summer Ventilation?

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

It is always exciting to see summer coming after winter and spring conditions. After cold months, nobody complains when the outside thermometer is claiming up each day announcing really warm summer days. Pretty soon, the ventilation system of your barn will have to work at full capacity, and like any other piece of equipment, it will provide you with satisfaction only if it is well set and in really good working conditions. Before we get to those warm days, now is the perfect time to verify the operation of all system components and to ensure that your controller is well adjusted.

The temperature setpoint for grower-finisher pigs can essentially stay the same over summer and winter periods. It is sometime suggested that summer temperature setpoint should be slightly increased compared to winter recommendations to reduce daily temperature fluctuations occurring during hot periods. Two experiments conducted at Prairie Swine Centre Inc. and recently published indicated that healthy pigs could adequately deal with a large daily temperature fluctuation (up to 15A

Growth rate and age at first estrus: Impact on managing the gilt pool

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Two essential features of effective gilt management are identifying a

The separate and interactive effects of handling and environmental enrichment on the behaviour and welfare of growing pigs.

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The attitude of the stockperson towards animals, and the quality of their husbandry skills are both known to be major determinants of animal behaviour, welfare and productivity. ‘Aversive’ handling such as that associated with the infliction of pain has been found to have a detrimental effect on the performance of growing pigs, whereas ‘pleasant’ handling in the early life environment can influence an animal’s subsequent behavioural development. Such handling can reduce an animal’s fear of human. At the same time barren environments have been implicated in the development of adverse behaviours but provision of environmental enrichment can increase the expression of exploratory behaviour and reduce the animal’s fear of both novel objects and humans. The aim of the current study was to determine the interactive effects of handling and environmental enrichment on the behaviour, performance and welfare of the pigs. In this study groups of finishing pigs were exposed to either minimal or pleasant handling, whilst concurrently being housed in either barren pen or a pen enriched with, either chopped straw, a chain, or a novel and nutritious toy. One group of pigs were handled pleasantly (pleasant group) for a period of 5 minutes per day while the other group received as little stockperson-pig contact as possible (minimal group) for a 10-week period. The stockperson did not enter the minimal group unless it was absolutely necessary. There is some indication that pleasant handling improved the food intake of pigs during week 1 to 5, although it did not increase the daily live weight gain or food conversion ratio. It was found that the effects of handling were, on the whole, not affected by the existence or type of environmental enrichment. Overall, the results of this study suggest that pleasant handling may benefit animal performance in the growing period. Pleasant handling did, however, make groups of animals more difficult to handle during routinely husbandry tasks such as weighing upon testing on week 6 and 10, may be due to that fact that the handling protocol used in this study have imposed too large a degree of human-animal interaction. Further work should be conducted to determine the degree of handling which, improves animal performance but maintains the ease of handling.

PRRS Eradication by Herd Closure

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PRRS can be a very costly disease to any hog producing outfit. One such method to eradicate PRRS is eradication without depopulation based on herd closure (AKA roll over, flow-through, or normal attrition). Knowledge of disease entry must be known so that biosecurity measures can be taken to prevent re-infection. The most common PRRS sources include pigs, semen, transport, people and equipment. Herd closure refers to no entry of replacement animals. This method works to progressively replace positive animals with negative ones and achieve a negative breeding herd over time. This method is really only practical if the barn has an isolated location (to prevent re-infection), strict on-farm biosecurity, semen from a negative boar stud, negative replacement animals, clean trucks, and multi-site production. The first step of this method is to develop an infected, recovered and immune population of reproductive animals. This is done via the gilt pool and should only be done in a stand-alone breeding barn. The second step is to close the barn to replacement animals for 6 months. This can be made feasible by developing an off-site breeding project or introducing a sufficient number of replacements into the herd prior to closure. The third step is to obtain a source of negative replacements (both gilts and semen). Step four includes the introduction of these negative replacements into the farm. The fifth and last step is the elimination of the virus from growing pigs. This requires a depopulation of the nursery to leave a population of PRRS negative animals behind them.

The provision of drinking water to veal calves for welfare purposes.

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Within the veal industry, the calves are commonly only provided with milk replacer and are not given access to water. This study compared the growth performance, behaviour, physiology, forestomach development, abomasal lesions, and meat quality of calves that were only given milk replacer with calves that were given access to water as well as fed milk replacer. Throughout the study, the calves would consume all the water provided, which indicates that the provision of milk replacer alone does not meet the thirst requirements of the calf. The growth performance and health status of the calves were not impacted by the provision of water. There was not a difference between calves given and not given water in terms of feces consistency, animal cleanliness, forestomach development, rumen hairballs and meat color and quality. However, when the calves were provided water, nonnutritive sucking was reduced throughout the entire study, which indicates the water may be a form of environmental enrichment. Calves given water did not refuse feed as frequently. Even though providing calves with water in addition to milk replacer did not have an impact on productivity, there were benefits in terms of welfare, such as reduced nonnutritive oral behaviours and reduced stress.

The use of mirrors for the control of stereotypic weaving behaviour in the stabled horse

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Social isolation in stabled horses is thought to be a contributing factor to weaving, a common locomotor stereotypy. The purpose of this study was to determine if providing mirrors would relieve the sense of social isolation felt by the horses, as they would think their conspecifics were nearby. The behaviour of six horses was recorded for one week prior to the exposure to mirrors. For the five weeks following the initial week of observations, three horses were exposed to mirrors and three were not. The mirrors were then switched, such that the horses that were not exposed to mirrors became exposed, and those that had been exposed were not. The behaviour of the horses was then recorded for five more weeks. The experiment ended with none of the horses being exposed to mirrors and their behaviour was recorded for one week. The results indicated that the mirror significantly reduced the problem behaviours of weaving and nodding, but did not affect the time spent standing active, dozing or ingesting. The use of mirrors to treat weaving and nodding problems appears to be more effective than other treatments including weaving bars.

Does nutritive and non-nutritive sucking reduce other oral behaviors and stimulate rest in calves?

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A common reason for producers not housing bucket-reared calves in groups is the non-nutritive oral behaviours (cross-suckling) that occur immediately following a meal. This study investigated if non-nutritive oral behaviours are associated with a nutritive suckling, if it reduces excitement and if nutritive sucking can be replaced with sucking on a dry teat. First, the differences in behaviour and cardiac activity of calves fed from a bucket versus calves fed through an artificial teat. All calves were individually housed. Calves fed from a bucket had a higher heart rate during their meal and after the meal only these calves were observed bar sucking. Bucket-fed-calves also spent more time licking their pen or their neighbor, laid down more quickly and had less variation in their heart rate. In the second experiment, the calves were individually housed and fed from either a bucket or an artificial teat; however, the effect of access to a non-nutritive teat after the completion of a meal was examined. Calves fed from a bucket, sucked on the non-nutritive teat longer than teat-fed-calves. Access to the non-nutritive teat in bucket-fed-calves also reduced the amount of time the calves spent nibbling at parts of the pen and the calves would lie down quicker. The third experiment the calves were either fed from a bucket or an automatic teat feeder system, but both feeding treatments were now housed in groups. Initially when the bucket-fed-calves were one month old they spent more time nibbling at parts of the pen, however, by three months of age, they reduced the amount of time they spent nibbling and cross-suckling. The calves that were bucket-fed consumed more milk, which resulted in them gaining more weight. When calves are housed individually, the calves perform fewer non-nutritive oral activities and are much calmer when they are fed from an artificial teat. Also by providing bucket fed calves with access to a non-nutritive artificial teat after individually calves have finished feeding can compensate for the lack of nutritive sucking. When calves are housed in groups, an automatic teat feeder does not completely satisfy the calves desire to suckle. Regardless of housing, the provision of an artificial teat during feeding did not improve the growth rate of the calves.

Comprendre la rA

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La rA

Mammary Gland Amino Acid Update and Litter Size

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Twelve multiparous sows (PIC Camborough 15; parity >2) were used to investigate the relationship between litter size and day of lactation, and plasma amino acid (AA) arteriovenous differences (A-VD), AA uptake, and plasma flow across the mammary glands. Sows were assigned randomly to one of the following litter sizes: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14 pigs per litter by cross fostering on d 2 postpartum. All sows were surgically fitted with catheters in the carotid artery and the main mammary vein. Matched arteriovenous blood samples were obtained on d 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, and 24 postpartum. Daily mammary uptake of AA was based on the product of plasma A-VD and daily mammary plasma flow (MPF). Daily MPF was estimated using the Fick method based on lysine conservation across the gland, and daily milk production. For the majority of AA, as litter size increased, AND did not increase, except for alanine (P < 0.05, linear and quadratic) and valine (P < 0.1; trend; linear and quadratic). As day of lactation increased, A-VD for the majority of AA increased (P < 0.05, linear and quadratic) except for arginine, lysine, and phenylalanine. As litter size increased, net daily mammary AA uptake increased for all indispensable AA (P = 0.001 to P < 0.05, linear and quadratic), excepting arginine. Milk production increased with increasing litter size (P < 0.001, linear) and with increasing day of lactation (P < 0.05, quadratic). Daily MPF increased (P < 0.05, linear) with increasing litter size, but did not change during the period measured from d 9 to 24. In conclusion, litter size appears to be a major determinant of net mammary AA uptake with daily mammary plasma flow a driving variable, whereas AA AND is a function of day of lactation and a major variable in determining net AA uptake with advancement of lactation.Source: The effect of litter size and day of lactation on amino acid uptake by the porcine mammary glands.