Altering animal flow to insure exposure to PCV2 prior to breeding, as part of an acclimation program is necessary to minimize the risk of PCV2 associated reproductive disease.

Piglets have little difficulty finding the feeder but piglets that were not exposed to creep feed during lactation do not recognize the feed as food when weaned.

This trick explains how to obtain foster sows for the adoptions.

Fertility problems with variable reproductive performances were detected. Also, ear and tail necroses appear in nurseries, and continuous diarrhoea cases and rectal prolapses in the fattenings.

We hear a lot of talk about optimizing profitability in grow-finish through reducing standard deviation of marketed weights and aiming that tighter weight group at the profit optimal average weight at the time of marketing. It’s a bit like playing darts, you want the darts to be in tight group but it is also necessary to be near the bull’s eye on the target.

Let us see the case of a farm with 5 non-productive days more than the average of the farms with the same profile. Where are these days lost?

We need to know, at all moments, which amount of feed are the sows eating, so we will weigh the feed at least once per week.

There are still unknown factors that prevent or block PRRSV replication in the endometrium and the not sufficient number of susceptible cells in the placenta might join forces and cause resistance to placental/transplacental PRRSV infection before 90 days of gestation.

Cross-sectional sampling (different age groups during one herd visit) has the advantage that results are obtained quickly.

The low supply sets the pace of the price of pigs, but there are many more factors at stake: multiproduct commercial flow from Denmark to US; Russia has just presented a proposal for the opening of exports from some countries of the EU, etc.

In this second part the actions described are the ones needed when the disease is already in the country.

Growth models can be a useful tool for decision making, allowing us to consider, simultaneously, multiple variables and showing us trends when facing different alternatives.

Current pig market weights are through the roof and at all-time highs for the modern period of meat pig production. We should be noticing a big decline shortly but…

Studying the pattern of traffic flows for your production site is important when designing your “bioexclusion” game plan.

In the last 4 batches of weaned piglets, the farmer saw around 3% of anorexic and lethargic piglets. All the treatments he tried failed (amoxicillin or florfenicol injections), and finally the piglets died.

ASF spreads mainly through the movement of infected pork and other animal products, as well as live animals, which includes wild boar.

Monitoring protocols in boar studs are often insufficient to timely detect an infection.

Achieving a high prolificacy and knowing how to take advantage of it (transform it into weaned piglets) is vital for the productivity of a sow farm.

If no disturbing health factors appear, this year will be remembered as a very positive one.

Four virus lineages, having clearly distinguishable HA, are currently co-circulating in European pigs and can be considered as enzootic viruses, even if their relative prevalence and level of incidence vary from one country to another.

After the clinical and serological evaluation it is decided to vaccinate against PRRSV, with which we achieve a gradual improvement in the health status on the farm. Some months later, a severe cough appears in the fattening pigs that later also appears in the nursery and in the sows.

The first cause of PCV vaccine failure is the purchase and use of generic vaccine of low quality and titre, but the exact cause of the failures can occur in various forms.

This system does not provide an improvement in the production data, but a saving in energy costs and a better use of the resources in general.

The next time you hear someone over lunch tell you the value of a tenth improvement in FCR, unless they are drawing a distribution on your napkin, tell them you don’t run an average pig business so you are not interested in their average values.

ASF is now firmly established in some areas of the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, where it is causing considerable trade disruptions, plus having a devastating impact on small-scale pig farmers.

Pigs in a commercial environment are consistently exposed to (sub) clinical infections and stressors, and systemic responses to such challenges significantly reduce the growth potential of modern pigs.

The use of these nests help create two well-differentiated areas: a warmer one for the piglets and a cooler one for the sows.

The Spanish price will rise until well into summer, and the range of the rise will depend on Europe.

The veterinarian is called from a new established herd in Brittany because some clinical signs appear on gilts from the two first deliveries introduced in the farm.

We should be cautious when setting the number of sperm per insemination dose, so the urge to reduce it does not make us use a number that is under the fertility threshold. Something that may be productive and/or profitable for a certain farm may not be so for another farm.

The aim is to avoid dehydration during the first days after weaning to improve feed intake.

During 2012 PCV2 variants or mutants (mPCV2) appeared in the USA and were frequently associated with PCV-associated diseases. The possibility of lack of cross-protection of commercial vaccines against mPCV2 is now of major concern.

Feed efficiency as it is measured by the feed conversion ratio (FCR) is basically an engineering concept. There are a lot of misconceptions about feed efficiency and even more surrounding the economics associated with it.

Many of these tools are difficult to clean and, in many cases, they may be damaged by water, soap, and disinfectants.

At a moment in which the prices of the raw materials, although they are giving us a break, are still very high, it is essential to take some time to think about the use of enzymes in swine.

The first goal of the project is to control PRRSv-infections in order to produce negative offspring.

Quick and simple system for identifying if we have an excessive yeast proliferation.

The results reveal that the stress that the sows due to excessive interventions around the moment of the farrowing causes a clear increase in the pre-weaning mortality.

The future for the European pig producers seems clear and the heart of the matter lies in knowing how the different markets will reposition themselves.

The interaction between M. hyopneumoniae and its host make M. hyopneumoniae one of the most important contributors to porcine respiratory disease.

Reducing piglets mingling in farrowing and nursery facilities was found to delay the infectious process leading to a lower number of early infections. Clustering piglets by litter in small units after weaning also decreased significantly the probability of early infection.

It is very important that all the staff on the farm can know quickly what is going on in the farrowing quarters, because in this way everybody will be able to carry out the daily duties in this area.

Different systems allow the sows to eat several times a day. In some of them we are the ones who decide, in other ones it is the sows.

Frequent deaths and cases of disease with typical “diamond-skin” lesions appeared in fattening pigs although they were vaccinated against Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae.

We saw aggressiveness in the sows, and we suspected that it could have been caused by the handling around the moment of the farrowing. We decided to register and analyze the data relative to the handling in order to confirm our suspicions.

In many cases, the use of materials that lessen the piglets' boredom helps to control the problem.

The procedure is simple, quick and well tolerated by the recipient sows.

Increased prices for pork will lead to decreases in quantity demanded by the vast majority of consumers, export and domestic. This is especially the case in the current structurally high unemployment situation which has seen inflation-adjusted per capita personal income fall steadily since the market crash of 2007.

It is common to see that there are many farms on which the gestation of the sows entered in the farrowing quarters is not correctly managed. How much space / batch would be losing a farm that enters systematically a 10% of sows / batch one week before than the appropriate date?

Pathogens that are transmitted mostly through direct, pig to pig, contact are generally contained with today’s biosecurity programs and pig flow strategies. However, pathogens using multiple routes of transmission seem to evade standard biosecurity programs.

In order to avoid that the pigs urinate and defecate in the trough we can place approximately a metre of pipe on the floor parallel to the trough and tightened with two clamps.

A risk of airborne transmission of PRRSV is real, and air filtration can significantly reduce its risk. Area regional approach on PRRSV control/elimination indicates our direction where we should move forward in future.

We fear that in the short term, the collapse caused by the Russian closure will become more evident and, that with it, the price will inevitably fall again.

It consists in lengthening the towropes of the windows that we want to keep more open.

Keeping the doors always closed with the help of a counterweight

There is an unusual increase of the returns-to-oestrus at 31-39 days. The majority are due to sows previously negative to the pregnancy ultrasound testing, and the returns-to-oestrus happened before 42 days.

Shuanghui International’s goal is the Chinese government’s goal, to acquire long-term, low cost sources of China’s favorite meat by forming long term, low risk, globally coherent pork and agricultural resources chains and they are well on way to that goal.

Each batch of sows is identified with a different colour, so we will only have to look at the colour of the pegs

About 50% of the vehicles used for transporting pigs in the United States are not washed between loads, so this article evaluates the ability of heating treatments to inactivate PRRSv present in manure-contaminated environments.

What further increases profitability in pig production is not minimizing costs, but maximizing revenue.