Impact of Lameness on Productive Potential of the Sow

Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Production by admin on March 28, 2012 | No Comments

Lameness is a major reason for culling, and it represents a decrease in welfare, productivity, and profit. High culling rates are economically expensive, reduce productivity, and represent a risk to herd health when new gilts are brought in. Young sows are often culled due to lameness and reproductive failure, so efforts should be made to reduce these numbers. Lameness can be caused by many reasons, but claw lesions can result in pain and inflammation. This can lead to reduced feed intake, lowered BCS, and inflammatory responses that can impact the entire body including reproductive organs. Lowered BCS can also increase the chance of a sow developing acyclic ovaries. Nutrition can be used to improve claw health, and trials using Zn, Mn, and Cu supplementation showed improvements in claw lesion occurrence and severity. The treated sows also had an increased reproductive performance as indicated by birth weights and litter size.

Measuring Lameness in Sows

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Lameness is the second most common reason for culling sows and gilts, and increases mortality and decreases welfare. Visual observations are usually used to assess gait, lameness, and leg and hoof health, which is subjective. More objective measures can include using kinetics with force plates, kinematics by assessing movement videos, and high-resolution floor mats. These are expensive options, so data loggers and analyzing lying position may be more feasible. Three techniques were compared: visual gait scores, kinematics, and postural behaviour. Kinematics was an expensive and time-consuming option. Gait scores and postural behaviour could be used on farm, but results can differ depending on the housing system used.

Advanced Sow Troubleshooting

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Effective troubleshooting is not just responding to problems, but also implementing preventative changes and focusing on progress rather than maintaining the status quo. It is important for the producer to regularly be able to detach and assess the barn as compared to others, and to identify problems as they are occurring. Some of the problems producers run into when troubleshooting are the inability to admit there is a problem, lack of communication, and not being open-minded to suggestions.

Benchmarking Practises of the Most Profitable Companies

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Benchmarking within the company and between similar producers can help track changes in production, and can help identify areas where savings can be achieved. Agri Stats is a company that will benchmark and prepare monthly audits. Benchmarking allows useful comparisons to be made, and help identify areas that need progress. The most profitable companies use benchmarking, and the key is to have a continuous flow of data and all members of the team accurately reporting data.

Tools, Techniques and Strategies to Improve Reproductive Performance and Genetic Progress

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One of the goals of reproductive technology is to be able to use a single dose of semen with lower sperm numbers, and to maintain farrowing rate and litter size. The choice of reproductive technology used will depend on the farm. Farms that use replacement gilts from their own herd will be more likely to choose single sire semen, select for specific traits, and take a reduced farrowing rate to achieve this. Farms with outside replacements will be more likely to use pooled semen and aim for high fecundity. Post-cervical artificial insemination requires further technician training and more expensive catheters, but can be successful with lower semen doses meaning good sire genetics can be used on more sows. Increased reproductive performance can also be achieved by removing sires with lowered fertility from the pool. Reciprocal translocation and fourier harmonic analysis can be used to determine which boars are sub-fertile. As well, individual ejaculates can be evaluated on sperm motility and morphology. Properly monitoring estrus, and breeding at the correct time will also improve reproductive performance. Synchronizing ovulation in sows would allow for successful AI without heat checking, and eCG with pLH or a GnRH antagonist can be used. Finally, with new technology and procedures it is still important that equipment is working properly, maintained and replaced as needed, and consistent protocols followed.

Canadian Pork Trade Balance, Outlook and Opportunity Gaps

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Canadian Pork International is an organization working for the export of Canadian pork. They help to maintain market access, which gives Canada a more competitive edge for export. Canada is the third largest pork exporter, and exports 64% of pork production making it the most export dependent country. Global meat consumption is expected to rise, but competition in a global market means Canadian pork needs to cater to consumer demands while remaining profitable. Consumer, end-user customer, and packer-processor demands all have to be considered to maintain a competitive advantage.

A Change in Perspective

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The introduction for J. Tacoma’s 2012 London Swine Conference presentation on change and collective thinking.

Loading Facilities for Market Hogs: Saskatchewan’s Top Ten

Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Research Watch by admin on March 26, 2012 | No Comments

Load-outs can be a stressful and time consuming experience. Poor load-out procedures can result in downer pigs and death losses. By looking at 10 different load out systems, researchers were able to identify key aspects of well built, low stress handling systems that are beneficial to producers. Recommended practice indicates that ramp angles should be less than 20°, that ramps should be fitted with cleats and have a non‐slip surface. It is recommended that loading facilities be well lit. Also behavior of the people doing the load-out has significant effects on the procedure. All factors, lighting, design, and handling techniques, should be looked at when trying to improve load-out procedures.

Weaning Management

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Weaning is very stressful for calves because they are separated from their mothers, cut off from milk, mixed with other animals and put in a new environment.  A study found that if calves were given a nose clip that cut them off from their mother’s milk, but still remained near their mothers, the calves ate more after being weaned and made 96.6% less noise than calves that were abruptly weaned. Also fence line weaning appeared to make the process easier on calves.

Effect of crude glycerol combined with solvent-extracted or expeller-pressed canola meal on growth performance and diet nutrient digestibility of weaned pigs

Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Production, Swine Innovation by admin on March 15, 2012 | No Comments

Partially substituting soybean meal and wheat with canola co-products was evaluated using 240 weaned pigs [6.3 kg initial body weight (BW)]. Pigs were fed for 4 week pelleted diets containing 150 g/kg of solvent-extracted or expeller-pressed canola meal either with 0 or 50 g/kg crude glycerol or a soybean meal control diet to measure performance and diet nutrient digestibility. The wheat-based diets were formulated to contain 9.45 MJ/kg net energy (NE) and 1.13 g standardised ileal digestible (SID) lysine (Lys)/MJ NE. Glycerol increased (P<0.05) diet digestible energy content by 0.6 and 0.2 MJ/kg of dry matter for solvent-extracted and expeller-pressed canola meal diets, respectively. Canola co-product diets had a lower (P<0.05) nutrient digestibility than the control diet, while DE content did not differ. For days 0–28, BW gain and feed efficiency did not differ between the types of canola meal, the two levels of glycerol, and the canola co-product diets and control diet, although feed intake was 6% higher (P<0.05) for the control than canola co-product diets. In conclusion, 150 g/kg of solvent-extracted or expeller-pressed canola meal or with 50 g/kg glycerol can partially replace soybean meal and wheat in diets formulated to equal NE and SID amino acid content fed to weaned pigs without affecting growth performance.

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