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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:
Reducing Water Wastage from Nipple Drinkers by Grower-Finisher pigs
Posted in: Environment by admin on January 1, 2002 | No Comments
Final body weight, variiations in final body weight, and growth rate were similar among pigs on different drinkers. Water disapppearance from pigs on the bowl drinkers during the growing period. However during the finishing period, water disappearance for pigs on the bowl drinkers was as high as conventional nipple drinker. The overall water disappearance from pigs on the improved nipple drinkers was very similar as those on well-managed nipple drinkers and bowl drinkers, with water disappearance from the pigs on improved nipple drinkers was reduced by 13% Daily manure output from pigs at different drinkers was similar during the first 4 weeks. Pigs on the conventional nipple drinkers and bowl drinkers produced more manure in weeks 4-8 respecively. The overall average daily manure output from pigs on the improved drinkers was 10% lower than conventinal nipple drinkers, but similar to well-managed bowl and nipple drinkers.
Bacterial Responses to Temperature During Aeration of Pig Slurry
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A LIQUID MANURE INJECTION TOOL ADAPTED TO DIFFERENT SOIL CONDITIONS
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The Growing Pollution Problem – Putting Pollution in Perspective; Food Price, Safety, Quality and Welfare
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Payback for animal welfare does not exist. People will refuse to eat pork if they feel the pigs were treated inhumanely, yet they will not pay more if they know they were treated right. Because of the recent food scares (such as foot & mouth and BSE), food safety is on par with price for consumers. Food safety development has been bringing confidence back up. Pollution constraints are a leading factor when it comes to cease of production among companies. Three factors primarily influence whether the consumer decides to purchase that product or not. This includes food safety (genetic modification is worrisome to many), perceived food quality (many think that current farming practices are reducing the taste of food), and pollution (too many people blame farmers). In Europe the government has even been putting a constraint on animal density in a given area. Farmers in Britain have to begin farming in what they call a
Effect of Mineral and Manure Phosphorus Sources on Runoff Phosphorus
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The methionine requirement of pigs from 25 to 50 kg
Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on | No Comments
In Western Canada, many protein sources such as peas and lentils which are lower in methionine (total methionine, tMet) than traditional protein sources are being used with greater frequency and in greater amounts. To ensure these diets are properly balanced, an experiment was conducted to establish the methionine requirement for 25-50 kg pigs. The requirement for female pigs was 0.25% of the diet and was slightly higher for barrows, at 0.29%. Ileal digestibility of methionine (d met) was 83%. The tMET requirement as a percent of lysine was 23% in females and 27% in males.
Social discrimination in lambs: persistence and scope.
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In natural rearing conditions, the social environment of lambs includes the mother, age-mates and other members of the flock. Lambs rapidly develop the ability to discriminate between individual conspecifics or members of different social categories. In the present study recognition among familiar unrelated lambs was assessed in a series of tests. At first, the lambs and their mothers were housed together in small groups for 1 week (Original groups; O). After that they were reorganized into new groupings (Recent-groups; R) for the remainder of the experiment. During test series 1, lambs that were paired with a familiar O-group partner, from which they had been separated for 5 days emitted fewer distress bleats than did those tested with an unfamiliar partner. Two days after this test, when the lambs were given a choice between an O- versus a R-partner, lambs did not display a preference for either of the stimulus lambs. However, in an additional two-choice test the subject lambs responded discriminatively to a recent familiar partner that was simultaneously present with an unfamiliar lamb. In summary results of this study suggest that lambs are capable of developing discriminative relationships with age-mates from different sub-groups, and that such social discrimination persists over a separation period lasting at least several days.
A method of using sustainability indicators to compare conventional and animal-friendly egg production systems
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This paper describes a technique that determines how different egg production systems contribute to the sustainable development of egg production. For demonstration purposes data collected from the Netherlands was used to compare a conventional battery cage system to deep litter and aviary systems, which are considered to be more animal friendly. The method was based on three criteria, the first being the identification of important issues pertaining to sustainable development. The next step was to translate these issues into indicators and finally assess how the indicators contribute to sustainable development. The first two criteria were based upon the findings from literature and consultations with experts in this field. The final criterion is based upon analysis of data and numerical and graphical comparisons. A graphical comparison illustrated how far from the target value each system was for each sustainability indicator. Numerical comparisons combined all the deviations for the sustainability indictors to provide an overall score, which demonstrated the overall contribution that a system made to the sustainability of egg production. The sustainability indicators used were economic performance, ammonia emission, energy use, hen and farmer welfare, and egg quality. All the indicators were considered equally important. Overall, battery cages appeared to be the most sustainable of the three systems. Of the two animal-friendly systems, the aviary was more sustainable than the deep-litter system. To improve upon the sustainability, the aviary system needs to improve the farmer welfare and the economic performance. However, these are only temporary conclusions as the effect of weighting the importance of each sustainability indicator needs to be investigated further.