Agricultural Labour – Meeting the Safety Requirements

Posted in: Production by admin on January 1, 2009 | No Comments

There is a trend across Canada to implement and enforce occupational health
and safety regulations in agricultural workplaces. Employer-employee
relationships generally trigger enforcement; as a result, hog operations and
mushroom farms seem to be targeted. Saskatchewan “Farm workers” are excluded from minimum standards; however, workers in egg hatcheries, greenhouses, nurseries, bush clearing, and commercial hog operations are not considered
“farm workers.” Hog workers are entitled to overtime after 10 hours a day or 80 hours in 2
consecutive weeks and there are special provisions for workers and employers to agree to an
alternate day instead of a statutory holiday in the legislation.

Enrichment of pork products with DHA omega-3 lipids

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DHA is a long chain (C22:3) omega-3 fatty acid normally found in fish.
Pigs and humans can convert shorter dietary omega-3 fats (18:3) from plants,
such as flax, to DHA but only at a rate < 10%. Standard corn or grain fed pork typically contains < 20mg DHA per 100 g serving but this can be increased to ~70mg if the pigs are fed 15% crushed flax. The present trial was conducted to determine if pork DHA content could be raised even higher, if DHA was fed directly. The bacon (n=40) was distributed for sensory evaluation in a home use test (HUT) survey. Often feeding highly unsaturated fats to pigs can lead to problems of `off’ odours caused by fat oxidation. Bacon from pigs fed diets of more than 0.6% DHA (~1188 mg per day) began to have off odours and off flavours described as `barnyard’ or `fishy’ which correlated with the amount of oxidation, as measured by thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS). In a survey of 40 panellists, over 60% said they would choose omega-3 bacon over regular bacon; however only ~ 60% would buy bacon supplemented above the 0.6% level.

Ileal and total tract digestibility in growing pigs fed cassava root meal and rice bran with inclusion of cassava leaves, sweet potato vine, duckweed and stylosanthes foliage

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Four F1 (Large White x Mong Cai), crossbred pigs, surgically fitted with post-valve T-caecum (PVTC) cannulas, were used in a 4*4 Latin square arrangement to determine the nutritive value of feeds in which the foliages from sweet potato,
cassava, duckweed and stylosanthes provided 30% of the dry matter of the diet, the remainder of which was a mixture (50:50) of cassava root meal and rice bran. The diets with fresh water spinach or fresh cassava leaves had a higher apparent digestibility of organic matter in the total digestive tract but not at the level of the ileum, when compared with the diets containing sweet potato vines or stylosanthes foliage. Apparent digestibility of crude protein was also higher on the diets with water spinach and cassava leaves but the differences were confounded by different concentrations of crude protein in the foliages, and were not significant when the digestibility coefficients were corrected by covariance for differences in protein content of the diets. The total tract apparent digestibility of the crude fiber ranged from 44 to 51%, and did not differ among diets. On all the diets, a substantial proportion of the crude fiber (close to 40%) was digested pre-caecally.

Willingness to Approach Behavior and Feed Disappearance of Weaned Pigs Following Vaccination With Mycoplasma Vaccines

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An adaptation of the nonhuman animal observation section of the 2003 Swine
Welfare Assurance program (SWAP) was utilized to evaluate the behavior of
weaned pigs following vaccination with Ingelvac MycoFLEX® (Boehringer
Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc., St. Joseph, MO) and Respisure®-One (Pfizer Animal
Health, Exton, PA). The objective was to determine if field observations of
markedly reduced pig activity following vaccination with certain Mycoplasma
hyopneumoniae vaccines could be confirmed and quantified by observing postvaccinal
pig behavior and feed disappearance. A total of 1,832 weaned pigs
17–23 days of age were allocated across 72 nursery pens (36 pens per treatment
group), resulting in approximately 25 pigs/pen with pen as the experimental
unit.
Pigs were evaluated to determine willingness to approach and feed disappearance
behavior pre- and postvaccination with each population of pigs serving as
its own prevaccination baseline for postvaccination behavior observations. After
entering and crouching down in a pen, the blinded observer counted all pigs who
approached him during a 15-s period. The pigs approaching the observer were
designated as willing to approach. The difference in pre- and postvaccination
values is reported here as a decrease in percentage approachability.
A significant decrease in postvaccination willingness to approach was observed
within both groups of pigs (p < .0001). However, the decrease in
willingness to approach was significantly less for the Ingelvac MycoFLEX®
vaccinated pigs compared with the Respisure-One vaccinated pigs (11.38% vs.
27.05%, p < .0001). The Ingelvac MycoFLEX® vaccinated pigs consumed
significantly more feed through 24 and 48 hr postvaccination (p < .0001 and
p D .0001, respectively). These findings suggest that willingness to approach and feed consumption may be useful parameters for assessing vaccine reactivity
(side effects) in pigs.

Amino acid digestibility of distillers dried grains with solubles, produced from sorghum, a sorghum-corn blend, and corn fed to growing pigs

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Since there are no data on the apparent ileal digestibility (AID) or the standardized ileal digestibility (SID) of amino acids (AA) in sorghum (S-DDGS) or in blends of sorghum and corn DDGS (SC-DDGS). Therefore, the objective of this experiment was to measure the AID and SID of AA in S-DDGS and SC-DDGS and compare these values to the SID of AA in C-DDGS. It was found that the digestibility of CP and Lys in S-DDGS and SC-DDGS is similar to values obtained for
C-DDGS, but many of the remaining AA are less digestible in S-DDGS and SC-DDGS than in C-DDGS. The concentration and digestibility of AA in C-DDGS varies among ethanol plants, which impedes the prediction of the concentration of digestible AA from the concentration of total AA.

For the full text please subscribe to the Journal of Animal Science

Holistic Method Turns The Tide on PRRS

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Research compiled over the years has given pork producers better “tools in their toolbox” to combat porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), says Scott Dee, DVM, director of the Swine Disease Eradication Center at the University of Minnesota. “Today more than ever before, producers can take a holistic, systematic approach to managing PRRS with greater success. Our improved understanding of the dynamics of the virus; transmission, infection, diagnosis and monitoring; and vaccination protocols has helped us provide producers with highly effective tools to turn the tide on PRRS infections,” Dee says. “The most effective and successful PRRS control and prevention within
an area requires a high degree of cooperation, coordination and collaboration within and among production
systems in a region,” Dee concludes. “Fortunately, producers have a number of effective tools available to better
help them determine current status, assess PRRS risk, measure and monitor infection status and improve their disease-
management decision making.”

Effect of dietary inclusion of benzoic acid on mineral balance in growing pigs

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The hypotheses of this study were that dietary benzoic acid increases mineral digestibility resulting in increased
mineral retention, and that these effects would be more profound with a higher level of inclusion of benzoic acid.
The objective was to investigate the effect of 10 or 20 g kg−1 inclusion of benzoic acid on balance, plasma concentration, and bone content (femur) of Ca, P, Mg, K, Na, and Cl. In addition, the effect of dietary inclusion of benzoic acid on the pH of urine and blood were determined. The study found that dietary inclusion of benzoic acid did in fact affect the pH in urine and plasma, the ATTD, retention, and plasma concentrations of Ca, P, K, Na, and Cl, and the concentrations of Ca, P, and Cl in the femur. It was concluded that dietary benzoic acid improved utilization of dietary Ca, P, and K, did not affect utilization of dietary Mg, and reduced utilization of dietary Na and Cl. These results indicate that the dietary inclusion of benzoic acid affects the utilization and metabolism of the macrominerals Ca, P, K, Mg, Na, and Cl differently, suggesting that several underlying mechanisms are involved.

For more information the full article can be found at http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/livsci

Quantification of factors affecting semen traits in artificial insemination boars from animal model analyses

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The objective of this study was to investigate individual fixed effects in an animal model for breeding value estimation for semen traits of pig sire breeds. It was found the semen volume was greatest from October to December and least in March and April. Sperm concentrations were greater in winter and early spring and least in late summer and early autumn. Semen increased until about 2 years of age and remained relatively constant thereafter. Motility decreased steadily with age, wheras the percentage of abnormal sperm increased over the entire productive lifetime of the boar. Both total sperm number and number of functional sperm rose as the interval between collections increased to 10 days. It is concluded that AI centers should place economically optimal emphasis on boars with favorable estimated breeding values for semen traits.

For more information the full article can be found at http://jas.fass.org/

Building ‘Team North America’ for livestock transport

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Canada and the U.S. share the longest undefended border in the world. As evidenced at the recent Livestock Transport Conference in Calgary, AB., the livestock and transport industries in both countries also share a strong commitment to progress in improving the care of livestock hauled within and across their borders. Leading examples of this commitment are training and certification programs for livestock transport, developed and implemented in both countries through cross-sector cooperation. The next step in the evolution of this trend is to further streamline approaches, says Susan Church, Manager of Alberta Farm Animal Care (AFAC), a major organizer and sponsor of the conference. A core part of the program included updates on the livestock transport training programs, which included
presentations by Church on the CLT program and by Erik Risa of the National Pork Board on the TQA
program.

Feed preference in pigs: Effect of cereal sources at different inclusion rates

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The palatability of different cereals was studied in 2 two-way choice (preference) experiments using pigs of 56 d of age and 17 kg of BW. The diets containing extruded rice, extruded naked oats, or naked oats were preferred by pigs to the reference diet. However, the reference diet was preferred to the diets containing 150, 300, and 600 g·kg−1 of cooked long-grain rice, oats, or cooked oats, 300 and 600 g·kg−1 of extruded wheat, wheat, corn, sorghum, or unhulled short grain rice, and 600 g·kg−1 of thick rolled oats, extruded corn, rye, extruded barley, micronized naked oats, barley, cassava, or biscuit meal. Therefore, cereal type, inclusion rate, and diet form affect feed preference in pigs and using cereals with greater preference values may contribute to the formulation of more palatable feeds, which enhance feed intake of piglets at critical stages such as weaning time.

For more information the full article can be found at http://jas.fass.org/