It seems that the price has initiated its spring rise, but many factors intervene. Whilst the Russian borders are still closed the collapse of some cuts (especially fats) will be inevitable.

The Philippine Bureau of Agricultural Statistics reported an increased of nearly 2.4% in the country's hog production during the first half of 2013.

Despite the evident usefulness of laboratory diagnosis, we must not forget that a field necropsy allows us to us recover part of the loss caused by the death of the animal.

With a water tank above the pregnant sows cages we ensure their water supply.

This farm produces its own gilts from grandmother sows, but taking advantage of the adaptation to meet the needs of the welfare law it was decided to increase its capacity from 600 sows to 1,200.

By ear tagging a gilt in the group with its birth date we will always know the age of the replacement gilts.

Time will tell if PEDV is the cause but weaned pig and feeder pig prices began to turn up in June, a couple of months ahead of their traditional seasonal bottoming with the turn toward seasonal highs which peak usually in February or March.

Recent reports still show high prevalence of the pathogen in most pig producing countries.

Clinical disease and outcome following PRRS infection has significant inherited components.

The use of two different feeds for the sows in the farrowing quarters is not always easy at a logistical level.

There are many home-made options that allow us to carry out this so important technique on our farms.

We are closing the financial year at the minimum level in the whole year, in a turbulent setting that will need three or four weeks to clarify itself.

The weaning-to-service interval is a short but vital period regarding the productivity of the sow.

When you earn a profit, you have created more tangible value than the cost of the scarce global resources used to create your final product.

The abattoir is a useful endpoint to collect data on herd health status and a valuable tool for monitoring the effect of disease control measures.

Having a piglet feeder and a lamp in each farrowing pen avoids the annoying moving of these items between rooms and sometimes between buildings.

Globalization is a fact, and regional or national peculiarities are progressively less important.

PCV2 vaccination of the gilts prior to insemination with PCV2 spiked-semen showed a clear decrease of viral load in the gilts as well as a much lower viral excretion that were compatible with foetus protection.

In a system with 2.35 farrowings/sow/year, more than 14 piglets born per farrowing, more than 11 weaned piglets/farrowing and around 1% of losses at weaning; what can we do to improve this?

Is the right strategy to get a farm stable, that is, control clinical signs reducing the economic impact of the disease; or should a farm adopt strategies to go “negative”? As for other questions in the epidemiological field, our answer is “it depends”.

The virus is highly resistant in the environment, showing also high resistance to chemical and thermal treatments.

Given the complexity of the problem caused by mycotoxins in pig production, we must come up with a preventive strategy in order to attain a contamination level that is as low as possible.

This is done by moving from single most likely value to ranges of possible outcomes with an assigned probability

Infection of pigs occurs at birth but maternal immunity suppresses viremic infection in growing pigs until immunity wanes around 10 weeks of age, when a hidden infection re-appears.

On the finisher sites, the farmer noticed that the growing pigs in all the farm sheds had become dull and lame.

Europe is facing difficulties for selling its meat: Russia restricts its importations and in the Asian markets it must compete with pig meat from the American continent.

The farrowing interval is one of the production parameters more commonly used as an indicator of the production efficiency of a farm.

Does the complexity and expense of genomics mean that it will only be available to the major global pig breeding companies in the future? If the price of genotyping continues to reduce, it may be possible for medium and smaller size breeding companies to share funding and identify desired genotypes.

Knowing how to make the most of space in our farrowing rooms is a key point, not only when using foster sows, but also for increasing the age at weaning. The farrowing pen is the most expensive pen at the farm, and we must obtain the maximum possible efficiency out of it.

How to administer drugs in order to optimize the speed of action, the efficiency and the financial cost.

Might be there is a little doubt nowadays on the beneficial clinical and economic effects of PCV2 vaccination in subclinical infections in piglets, but… which is the role that sows play in the whole picture?

Political decisions in the form of new laws, regulations, permitting requirements, etc. are extra-market forces which can cause market costs and revenues to swing significantly from the pathway set down by fundamental forces, like supply and demand.

This article suggests some solutions to the main problems encountered in pregnancies with group housing.

One of the challenges when conducting a disease elimination project is to ensure that the pathogen has in deed been eliminated from the herd.

This trick consists in offering cheap manipulable materials that satisfy the pigs' needs.

None of the employees on this farm had ever seen TGEv before, but were concerned that is what they were seeing.

In September Spain has started a downward trend spiral. The livestock supply is very high, and the maximum activity of the abattoirs cannot even absorb it.

The hoppers and the feeders will condition our ability for attaining maximum feed consumption.

This economic model was create to provide a decision support tool for farmers and veterinarians, who can enter their own data to calculate the severity of PMWS on their farm, the cost of disease and what could be the most cost-effective control measure.

A simple piece of cigarette paper will help us to evaluate, in an unbiased way, if the surfaces are completely dry after their cleaning and disinfection.

The two main factors that make that certain farms have not been successful adapting to the animal welfare regulations are design and handling/management.

Understanding the market dynamics of feed ingredient costs is crucial not only to manage overall costs of production but to ensure effective strategies in purchasing, margin hedging, peak line of credit acquisition and liquidity or financial risk management.

Which factors affect the WTSI? Among the factors with a biggest influence we have: inadequate intake during lactation, season of the year, and length of the lactation.

One of the greatest long-term potentials for genomic selection is to identify specific genes or genomic regions with a significant impact on pig health and to aid selection for disease resistance and/or disease tolerance.

The goal of this trick is to create a register of the coming into heat of the gilts that can be interpreted quickly and easily, and to control the day of the beginning of the treatment with altrenogest when we wish to delay their mating/service.

Ileitis can take different forms, and it is frequent that a subclinical and a more severe and clinical form coincide.

We allowed the shared lactation between different litters by raising the fences located between the farrowing pens a week before the weaning due date.

In general terms, immunization through vaccination is the easiest and safest way to stabilize a herd.

The feeding practices, the choice of the raw materials and the addition of additives have the potential of modulating the GI microbiota, reducing the energy cost for maintenance and also controlling the pathogenic bacteria.

Micro-sprinklers were installed above the windows in order to reduce the temperature in the farrowing rooms in summer.

In order to keep the population of the different kinds of animals constant, the flows of pigs must be constant. This is, we must keep the production pace of the farm.

It is believed that TTSuVs themselves do not directly cause any disease but they could potentiate coinfecting pathogens and participate as triggering factors for diseases like PCVDs and PRDC.

PRRSV by itself may induce mild-to-severe respiratory disease but rarely results in mortality.

Novel cryopreservation methods and containers are designed to increase semen cryosurvival without disturbing production of conventional liquid semen doses. This provides opportunities for gene banking and preserved fertility when inseminated deep intra uterine, alongside undisturbed commercial AI-dose production.

This feeding system has a great return on investment, especially for the lactating sows, and even more in hot areas.

PCV2 may reach embryos/foetuses upon transplacental spread during viremia or upon insemination with contaminated semen.

The goal is to identify the number of returns to oestrus of the sows quickly and at a glance using coloured pegs.

The piglets born to primiparous sows show a worse performance during the nursery stage and a twofold risk of dying than the piglets born to multiparous sows.

Knowledge of the dynamics of infection within the herd will allow implementation of better control strategies in affected herds.

This particular case occurred in a multisite farrow to finish operation in South Western Ontario, Canada.