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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:
Soil Landscape Modeling for Setting Phosphorous Application Limits
Posted in: Environment by admin on January 1, 2000 | No Comments
When manure, or other nutrient-rich materials are added to the soil, nitrogen is the nutrient usually used to determine the application rate. Phosphorous is another nutrient in manure which can impact the environment when applied in excess. Fortunately, phosphorous is relatively immobile in the soil. However if applied to excess year after year, then there is a chance for it to become an environmental problem as runoff and erosion carries it to ponds and streams. This project is designed to establish acceptable P levels on farm land and determine how it behaves under various soil and moisture conditions by developing a model that simulates various field and soil conditions and follows the movement of P through plant uptake under different field profiles and rainfall situations. The Nutrient Loading Model (NLM) accomplishes this in both a forward or “predictive” sense and in a reverse or “regulatory” sense. In the predictive mode, it predicts the level of P in streams that results from nutrient applications to the soil. In the reverse mode, it starts with the P concentration in the water that would be considered acceptable and establishes the amount of P that could be added to the soil to not exceed this downstream water concentration. Once the model is tested and gains acceptance from those involved in watershed studies of soil erosion, it will be a valuable tool for resource protection agencies and livestock manure managers.
Confined Animal Production Poses Manure Management Problems
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This article presents national and countylevel estimates of numbers of animals and quantity of manure nitrogen produced on confined animal operations (feedlot beef, dairy, swine, and poultry), as well as
farmland acreage available for nitrogen application. The estimates are a joint effort of three USDA agenciesa
Positive Human Health Effect of Wearing a Respirator in a Hog Barn
Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on | No Comments
Nutrition Research Program
Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on | No Comments
The nutrition program at Prairie Swine Centre is focused on practical approaches to meet three primary objectives; improving net income for pork producers, optimizing the use of locally available feed ingredients and in enhancing the sustainability of the pork industry. In order to improve net income for producers, feeding programs must be matched to meet overall farm objectives. Overfeeding wastes money and underfeeding impairs performance of the animals. For the past few years, research at the Prairie Swine Centre has focused on defining requirements for essential amino acids. Using a factorial approach, results from this research can be easily applied and suited to specific pork farms. A more recent focus of research has been on uniformity. Although there has been lots of discussion on uniformity, there is little knowledge of factors affecting uniformity and whether or not decisions made by producers can have any impact.
The use of local ingredients is not currently optimized by the pork industry. The main issue concerning these ingredients is variability of nutrient content. The focus of research has been on DE because with least cost ration formulation, the greatest pressure is on available energy. The objective of ingredient research is to identify chemical or physical properties related to changes in nutrient content, which can then be used to predict actual nutrient content.
To ensure that our pork industry remains environmentally sustainable, pork production must evolve with environment issues in mind. Research continues to seek to reduce nutrient excretion in slurry, reduce gas emissions into the air and minimize total water usage. One possibility of reducing total nitrogen excretions is in feeding fermentable carbohydrates, as this causes as much nitrogen as possible to be excreted in faeces rather than urine. The nutrition research program continues to focus on practical approaches for meeting the primary objectives.
Influence of hog manure application on water quality and soil productivity
Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on | No Comments
Hog manure has been known to be a valuable source of nutrients but little has been documented about the environmental impacts of organic fertilizers on ecosystems of semi-arid to sub-humid ecosystems. This study addresses manure management on croplands as well, the environmental and health concerns with the use of hog manure as a fertilizer. The objectives were to measure the presence and potential pollutants in soils, runoff waters and shallow ground water as well as to provide recommendations to prevent the accumulation of environmental or health related pollutants. The entire experiment is to take six years. Parameters measured are dissolved solids, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, carbon, heavy metals and coliform bacteria. The project was started in 1998 and is underway. The baseline soil and water data at the Perdue site was collected during the fall of 1998 and fall 1999, and the first manure application was October 1999. Post application data has been taking place and preliminary results are expected to be evaluated in spring 2001. Baseline data has been collected at the Elstow site and the first manure application is expected to take place in the fall of 2001.
The working environment in non-cage systems for laying hens.
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Farming practices and the respiratory health risks of swine confinement buildings
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The social environment influences the behavioural responses of beef cattle to handling.
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Cattle responses to handling are probably not only a reaction to human, but also depend on other elements of the situation such as social context, physical environment, and the novelty of the situation. In particular, the social context may be important for cattle, which, in common with other species of domestic ungulates, are very gregarious. As handling can be stressful for farm animals, it can be hypothesised that social partners modify individual responses to handling. The present study investigated the effect of the presence or absence of social partners on behavioural reactions of beef calves in a handling test. At the age of 10 months, 38 calves from two breeds (Salers and Limousine) were individually subjected to the docility test (reactions to handling), once while in visual contact with four familiar peers, and once in the absence of peers. The docility test procedure included physical separation from peers (30 s; period 1), exposition to a stationary human (30 s; period 2), and handling by human (30 s to 2.5 min, according to the success in handling; period 3). In absence of human (period 1), calves in visual contact with their peers spent more time motionless than when peers were totally absent. The social environment also influenced the duration of handling (period 3); the human required more time to successfully handle calves when peers were present. In conclusion, the results of this study show that the presence of peers affects individual calves’ reactions to docility test.