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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:
New Tools for Precision Feeding: NRC (2012)
Posted in: Nutrition, Pork Insight Articles by admin on March 28, 2013 | No Comments
The new NRC(2012) nutritional requirements have been released and address some of the current concerns and advancements that have taken place. The NRC (2012) includes Excel nutritional requirement models for gestating sows, lactating sows, and grow-finish pigs. The main two limitations of the models are the lack of cost-benefit analysis, and that the model does not accurately predict feed intake. The new NRC (2012) nutritional requirements also includes analysis of gender, Ractopamine inclusion, and immunocastration – including the weight at which it is done. These new inclusions will help producers who decide to use entire, or immunocastrated, boars, and to aid those who decide to split-feed based on sex. Good performance is indicated by feed efficiency and lean growth. The NRC also takes into account feed that contains lower energy and/or co-products, as these are used increasingly often with the current high feed costs. The use of these should be based on cost-benefit analysis, and the cost of energy in a diet.
Advances in Sow Nutrition- The Use of Mathematical Modelling in Sow Nutrition
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Modern sows may have different nutritional needs due to their increased size, lean mass, and litter size. The lactation model is a mathematical model for the nutritional requirements based on the litter size and piglet growth. Whole animal models originally assumed identical milk production in all sows in a group, but improvements allow sow variation to be taken into account and the protein requirement distribution curve created. Other models exist, but they do not yet have the option to include inter-sow variation. Mathematical models are a valuable tool for predicting nutrient requirements of sows, and some are able to consider inter-sow variation.
Management Practices That Maximize Feed Efficiency
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Increased feed costs highlight the importance of feed efficiency, which can be measured in multiple ways. However, feed costs and barn management should not be overlooked if feed efficiency is improved. Since there are multiple ways to measure feed efficiency, care needs to be taken when for in farm comparisons, and for bench-marking comparisons. Feed efficiency can be impacted by the barn environment, genetics, herd health, diet composition, and pig management. The barn environment mainly concerns maintaining proper temperature, which can be affected by ventilation and dampness. Genetics can alter feed efficiency, growth rate, and feed intake, so there will likely be trade-offs to improve one or multiple traits. High herd health status will improve feed efficiency, and highlights the need for strong biosecurity protocol. Diet composition can influence feed efficiency through energy concentrations, nutrients, additives, and form of feed. Finally, pig management includes feeder design, feeder space, and whether pigs are sorted (not recommended).
Pain Control
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As the pork industry progresses, it is becoming important to consider pain management to provide higher quality animal care. The French National Institute for Agricultural Research recommends following the 3S system: suppress, substitute, and soothe. Suppress means eliminating painful procedures when possible, and each farm should individually evaluate if any procedures are not necessary. Substitute means using a less painful procedure, or altering a procedure so it is less painful. An example would be the reduction in age of castration from nursery age to 3-10 days old. Soothing pain can be done by pharmaceuticals, and hopefully will have advancements in the future for convenient, cost-effective methods. Some of the drugs that could potentially be used include anesthetics, analgesics, or sedatives (in combination with anesthetics). With the use of pharmaceuticals, the effectiveness of a drug for a certain procedure will need to be evaluated, and the withdrawal time considered.
Managing Pre-Weaning Mortality: Practical tools and protocols to reduce PWM On-farm
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Increases in pre-weaning mortality can cause a large lose of opportunity, and it is important all employees have a united goal of reducing pre-weaning mortality. Sow management before and after farrowing will keep sows at the optimum body condition score, which will result in better litters. At farrowing, drying piglets off and providing sufficient heat sources is essential. Fostering can even out competition, make use of functional teats, and prevent starve-outs. A minimum weight for piglets should be set, as it is pointless to spend time on a piglet which will not be viable once moved to the nursery. Sows care is important as they provide the majority of the piglet care, and keeping her happy and healthy will result in fewer pre-weaning mortalities. Finally, record keeping is needed to track progress and make changes where necessary.
New Applications in Nursery Nutrition and Management: Giving Piglets the Best Possible Start with Practical Management Tips and
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Nursery management, including the necessity of high cost nursery diets, and compensatory growth is debated in multiple papers. This paper argues that the majority of previous studies on compensatory growth lack sensitivity or replications, and that pigs on restricted energy or nutrient diets in nursery remain below the weight of unrestricted pigs. Regardless if compensatory growth occurs, it is still important to optimize health and performance post-weaning. One way is to increase feed intake, or decrease the time until feed intake, for newly weaned pigs. Some ways to stimulate feed intake include providing creep feed, feeding complex, palatable starter diets, providing sufficient feed space and water supply, a weaning room temperature of 28ºC (to start), increased lighting period, and minimizing additional stress. The nutrient levels of a starter diet are less important than the amount eaten, but nutrient utilization can be improved by using digestible ingredients, or additions like phytase. Good nursery management can help optimize future performance, and a proper starter diet is one of the major ways to do so.
Managing Pre-Weaning Mortality
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Sunterra Farms explains how they provide consistently high quality pigs to their nursery, and reduce pre-weaning mortality. Providing consistent numbers starts with servicing consistent numbers of sows each week. This can be managed by using graphs, and predicting which sows and gilts should come into heat the following week. When sows are moved to the farrowing room it is important to have the room set-up at the proper temperature, with no drafts, and preferably dry. During farrowing, drying piglets and assisting sows that need it will reduce mortalities. Cross-fostering will help to even out competition between piglets, and putting smaller piglets together on a second or third parity sow will also allow them to gain antibodies that may not be present in gilts. Putting 14 piglets on gilts and first parities will maximize their future lactation, and fostering pigs that are falling behind onto a new sow will help them to catch up. Finally, it is important to constantly monitor results, and to communicate with employees about goals and their ideas.
Lactation in Motion
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The last third of pregnancy involves the greatest increase in mammary gland mass and involves estrogen, progesterone, relaxin, and prolactin. A few days prior to farrowing, colostrum forms and lactogenesis begins through cellular development, genetic expression, and some milk secretion. Lactogenesis is primarily controlled by prolactin, and it signals the switch from producing colostrum to producing milk components. After farrowing, mammary growth and function is controlled by the suckling of the piglet. Each piglet will suckle from one teat, and increased removal of milk will send signals for that gland to secrete more milk. Milk ejection occurs every 45-60 minutes for 10-15 seconds. Sows that have more cycles with less milk will release more milk in a day than those that release more milk at less frequent intervals. If a mammary gland stops being stimulated through weaning, piglet death or removal, inhibitory factors will stop milk secretion. If a teat is not suckled within three days of farrowing milk secretion will not begin, and a longer period between farrowing and suckling will result in decreased milk secretion. It is important that the interplay between piglet and mammary gland is not interrupted, and that stressors which might affect milk secretion by avoided in the farrowing room.
Feed, Caloric and Financial Efficiency
Posted in: Economics, Energy, Pork Insight Articles by admin on March 14, 2013 | No Comments
Providing sufficient dietary energy is the most expensive cost for a swine facility, and high barn throughput is now not always the way to gain the most net profit. Energy comes from starch, protein, fat, and fibre which are all used with a different efficiency. Current diets often use a wide variety of ingredients, and the price relationship between ingredients has changed, making the cost of formulating present diets more complex than in the past. Once obtained by the pig, energy can be used for maintenance, fat gain, or lean gain. Maintenance uses 25-35% of the energy intake: this will need to be accounted for if pigs are kept in the barn for a longer period of time. The trade-off for using a less expensive, lower energy diet is that the pig will be in the facility for longer, and maintenance and space costs will be higher than for a quicker throughput. When lowering dietary energy concentration it is important to consider the energy intake of the pig. At too low a concentration, the pig may not be able to consume enough feed to maintain the same growth rate as a higher concentration feed. The intake of feed varies among farms, and it would be best to create a farm-specific feed intake curve to determine what energy concentration will be best. Other aspects of the diet will have an impact on carcass characteristics as well, for example dietary fat. The source and the quantity of fat in the diet will affect the deposition and firmness of the carcass fat. Overall, dietary energy concentrations and sources should be carefully considered to lower costs, but the other aspects of the diet should not be overlooked.
Capturing Dam-Line and Sire-Line Value in a Production Environment
Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Swine Innovation by admin on February 20, 2013 | No Comments
As part of a review of future research and development possibilities in the area of swine reproductive biology and breeding herd management (Foxcroft, 2012), a number of key areas of future interest were identified. One centred around the gene x environment interactions that determine the final phenotype of production-level progeny in mature sow populations. Understanding the mechanistic basis for the observed gene x environment interactions that drive “litter of origin” effects on post-natal performance has been an important part of our research program. The outcomes from these studies suggest ways to identify litter phenotypes and to create production strategies to address existing “phenotypic plasticity”. The possibility of using a nutrigenomic approach to offset such programmed effects has also been explored. At a more basic level, the goal is to find genomic/epigenomic markers for the key biological traits that drive these gene x environment outcomes, with the aim of including genetic markers for these component traits in more sophisticated breeding programs that deliver replacement gilts for commercial production. A second area of focus was driven by recent opportunities, at least in North and South America, to determine individual boar fertility in large commercial boar studs. This constitutes the first step in improving the impact of genetically superior sires on the number, and particularly the quality, of commercial progeny. At the same time, access to fertility data from large populations of terminal-line boars enables association analyses that will hopefully allow genomic and proteomic markers of boar fertility to be identified. A more detailed discussion of recent collaborative studies on boar fertility will be presented by Amanda Minton in Breakout # 11 at this meeting. As part of this74 Foxcroft et al presentation, data from the same collaborative studies will be used to identify the extent to which variability in boar fertility, and current AI practices in the industry, has probably been limiting the performance of outstanding dam-line females.