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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:
Sudden Death during Transport: How Hog Heart Health Affects In-Transit Losses
Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Production by admin on March 27, 2014 | No Comments
The cause of in-transit deaths in hogs is rarely examined, but a previous study identified that many of the hogs had heart lesions causing heart failure. When in-transit loss (ITL) hearts were compared to non-ITL hearts it was found ITL had a heavier average weight, visible enlargement was more common, and both groups had chronic, microscopic lesions in 76% of hearts. Genetic sequencing found 40 possible genes associated with the lesions, two of which are known to cause HCM in humans. Pig hearts are relatively small, so they have little ability to overcome challenges. Therefore, abnormalities can cause heart failure when heart rate is elevated. More extensive studies and genetic sequencing should be performed to determine how closely related pig heart lesions are related to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in other species.
Managing Pile Ups
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Pile ups can occur in facilities due to increased prolificacy in sows creating an excess of weaned pigs, or the increased market weight of grow-finish pigs requiring extra space. Some of the management strategies used to avoid pile ups are reducing fill to fill intervals, disrupting all-in all-out flow, or increasing stocking density. All of these create problems of their own, so alternative strategies or ways to effectively use the previous strategies are needed. Some of the important aspects are to focus on nursery management, sorting by size in the nursery, feeding a diet based on size, and running trials to find the most effective strategies.
Managing Pile Ups
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Sow reproductive performance has been improving, and now hyperprolific sows can wean 30 pigs per year. Problems with hyperprolific sows are providing space for the increased number of pigs produced, and making sure weaned pigs are still good quality. Agri-Marché has 150 farms to raise pigs, either from their own sows or bought as nursery pigs from other suppliers. In the past, raising nursery pigs from mixed sources was common practice, but the increased awareness of disease spread has reduced that practice. Agri-Marché’s farrowing barns were increasing the number of pigs produced, but as quality of these pigs started to decline the focus shifted to producing better pigs that will not lose money in finishing. Agri-Marché transitioned some of their barns to nursery facilities and created breeding facilities to supply pregnant gilts. Management technology has allowed for more complicated pig transportation routes to keep nursery, finishing, or wean-to-finish units nearly full.
International Trade – Barriers and Opportunities for Canada’s Pork Sector
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While the domestic market is important, Canada’s pork industry relies heavily on exporting its products. Canada exports 2/3 of its pork, and is the 3rd largest pork exporter in the world. Global pork consumption is expected to increase, so opening additional markets and increasing sales in the current buying markets are priorities. However, other countries are also highly competitive in securing trade agreements, so Canada should focus on gaining trade advantages and catering to market access requirements. Five trade priorities should be finalizing CETA to export duty-free pork to the EU, finalizing a free trade agreement with South Korea, negotiating trade deals with Japan to maintain competitiveness, resolving COOL issues with the US, and managing trade restrictions with feed additives like ractopamine.
Real Factors Affecting Profitability
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Murphy Brown LLC produces 17 million pigs per year, and one of the challenges is the amount of production information that is collected. Some of their strategies to manage information are to consider components other than feed for cost/cwt, do a profit factor analysis ranking, use models for decision making, use stretch targets, and monitor lead indices.
Health Monitoring Matters: the Role of CSHIN
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The Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network is a swine health surveillance system that provides real time health information to producers and veterinarians. Surveillance involves tracking changes in health, updating disease knowledge, and communication of this information to improve decisions. Active (testing) and passive (reporting) detection methods are used by government or industry personnel to track listed and emerging diseases. In 2011 CSHIN ran an analysis to identify surveillance gaps, and the recommendation was to adopt a three-network system. The three networks are a swine veterinarian communication network, an anonymous data collection and analysis network, and a centralized laboratory data network. The benefits of the CSHIN networks are that they can detect outbreaks early on, provide a response infrastructure, provide information on the situation, improve communication, provide health information for trade contracts, can prove disease-free status, and can prevent disease-related trade blocks. The CSHin networks increase communication and knowledge of diseases in Canadian herds, allowing for faster, more accurate responses to disease outbreaks.
High Fiber Swine Diets
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Including co-products in swine diets can often increase the fiber content above that of corn and soybean meal diets. The fermentability, viscosity, and gut passage rate can vary between sources of fiber, and can influence bacteria colonization and endocrine responses. Nursery pigs can possibly maintain performance on lower energy, higher fiber diets. A study testing the effects of replacing soybean meal with alternative ingredients found no clear pattern to the feed intake changes, even though digestibility decreased. When energy and amino acid content were kept constant, pigs maintained growth performance with the addition of certain alternative ingredients. Grow-finish pigs may also be able to maintain growth performance with alternative ingredients, but the higher fiber diets tend to increase gut volume and weight, so dressing percent decreases. Feeding co-products offers a the opportunity to reduce feed costs, but usually increase the dietary fiber of a diet.
Standard Operation Procedure Split-Suckling
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Split suckling can be used to make sure all pigs consume colostrum. This SOP goes over the materials, preparation, and clean-up involved with using split-suckling.
Making the Most of the Suckling Period
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Standard Operating Procedure Briefings (SOPB) and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) can help inform employees why something is done and how to do it. The SOPB reviews literature on management practises and communicates clearly the benefits and risks or negatives of a certain practise, and it can be used to help employees have a wider overview of the procedure. The SOP is a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to perform a practise. This is especially useful for training employees, but can be used as a reference by all employees if questions arise. Having a SOPB and SOP for new born pigs can help employees provide high quality care, and make management decisions.
Retrofitting for Group Housing
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Group housing will soon be required in barns, but many Quebec producers have not made plans to invest in the transition. Many producers plan to sell or close due mostly to the expense, but the producers that have transitioned and generally happy with their new system. Agri-Marché is one company that has decided to transition all of the sites connected to their network over to group housing. They have already transition two sites: one to a floor feeding system, and the other to an ESF system. The first site was a multiplication unit that raised only gilts, and is over 30 years old. It was transitioned over to a farrowing unit, and the number of sows was increased from 250 to 640, and cost per head was $640. The second site was newer (1999), and was transitioned to a batch farrowing unit. The use of panels allowed the original flooring to be kept (1/3 solid, 2/3 slatted), and the ESF to be used despite the different dimensions of the pens. The sow herd increased from 250 to 850 sows, and the cost per head was $380. Both projects had their advantages and disadvantages, but can both be an example of modifying existing barns to fit the new regulations.