Enrich your pigs, enrich your profits
Enriching a sow’s environment is easy, inexpensive and offers a range of benefits. This was made clear by the project “From Innovation to Adoption: On-farm demonstration of Swine Research”, which was led by Ken Engele at Prairie Swine Centre and...
Post-doctoral Position: Development of an on-farm tool to measure quality of life and sustainability in farmed pigs
Post-doctoral Position – Swine Welfare: Development of an on-farm tool to measure quality of life and sustainability in farmed pigs Location: University of Saskatchewan – Western College of Veterinary Medicine, Canada Start date: September 2023 (some flexibility on start date...
Career Opportunity – Maintenance Specialist
Swine Barn Maintenance Specialist Full-time Permanent Apply by: June 30, 2023 Email resume to: tatjana.ometlic@usask.ca Prairie Swine Centre is a non-profit swine production research organization affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan and located 10km southeast of Saskatoon. We offer a...
Career Opportunity – Animal Attendant I
Animal Attendant I Full-time Permanent Apply by: June 28, 2023 Email resume to: Tatjana.ometlic@usask.ca Prairie Swine Centre is a non-profit swine production research organization affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan and located 10 km southeast of Saskatoon. We offer a...
Feed Processing Reduces Feed Toxicity
Ergot has long been known to have detrimental effects when fed to pigs, and a producer’s best option is to avoid feeding ergot contaminated grains. Currently, visual inspection is the most practical method for reducing the risk of ergot toxicity,...
Evaluating the impact of early life management of piglets on lifetime welfare and performance
The early life experience of piglets before and around weaning can influence their behavioural adaptation and the development of positive or negative behavioural characteristics that have significant, and likely lasting, implications for welfare, stress resilience and production performance. This research...
Novel antimicrobials for swine health
Dr. Chris Gray, University of Guelph Summary The main goal of the project has been to enhance the performance and reduce the toxicity of a novel synthetic AMP (HHC-36), employ machine learning (ML) methods for discovering new, more potent antimicrobial...
Establishing value/utility of soluble CD163 as a biomarker for predicting PRRS-induced disease severity in swine herds
Dr. John Harding, University of Saskatchewan Summary There is evidence to conclude that both sCD163 and the thyroid hormones are potential biomarkers of disease resilience. At present, we have stronger evidence for the thyroid hormones and supporting further investigation for...
Strategies for detoxifying vomitoxin using innovative chemical and biological approaches in post-weaning piglets
Dr. Joshua Gong, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Guelph Research & Development Centre Summary With global warming, contamination of feed ingredients by the mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON), occurs more often, thus compromising swine production efficiency. Sodium metabisulfite (SMBS) is a chemical that...
Barn gas monitoring with automated ventilation control
John Van de Vegte, OMAFRA Summary Farrowing, nursery and finishing barns do require a designed ventilation system to manage air quality within the pig housing areas. Ventilation system performance is optimized through the use of a sophisticated ventilation system controller...
Development of an in vitro/in vivo correlation method to assess the efficiency of oral drug release from medicated feeds in swine
Dr. Jerome del Castillo, University of Montreal Summary For the last 70 years, feed has been used as a convenient drug administration vehicle for group medication of pigs. Once they satisfy the requirements for regulatory approval, the dietary drug premixes...
Precision feeding of gestating sows
Dr. Ira Mandell, University of Guelph Summary Using feeding programs that precisely match estimated daily energy and Lys requirements for gestating sows provides the opportunity to reduce nitrogen losses to the environment and reduce lactation feed usage, without negatively affecting...
