NPIC
The National Pork Industry Conference was recently held at the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells. The meeting dates were July 11th through July 14th. This year the conference celebrated its 25th year. The organizers of this conference announced record attendance for 2021. It is a good venue for meetings and is very family friendly. The dates for the 2022 conference are July 10th – 13th.
Numerous SVC clients and SVC Veterinarians were in attendance. The opening reception was held on Sunday evening followed by meetings all day Monday plus Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.
There was naturally a lot of hallway talk with the main topic being the rapid spread of 1-4-4 PRRS virus throughout the upper Midwest. There have been an unseasonable number of farms (sow, nursery, finishing, and W-F) continuing to break recently. SVC Veterinarians have multiple research projects in the works to help try to sort out where this is coming from. Stay tuned for updates.
SVC Presentation
During the Monday after-noon session, SVC’s Dr. Chris Sievers and Dr. Ryan Strobel presented their “Top 10 Ways to Deal with PRRS Positive Pigs in the Nursery”
- Keep pigs warm and comfortable
- Utilize extra labor and support growers
- Raising acute positive pigs vs euthanizing and purchasing
- Keep feed and water fresh
- Utilize antibiotics strategically
- Pull extra diagnostics and use autogenous vaccine isolates
- Wean an older pig
- Change pig flow
- PRRSv vaccines
- Anti inflammatory treatments
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, made a guest video appearance to announce that the Pandemic Livestock Indemnity Act funds (>$300 million) are going to be re-leased in July. Additional funds are also being made available to target small producers that were harmed by the 2020 pandemic market disruptions.
China update
Another very interesting topic was presented by Jeffen Chen from Huanshan Group in China. He gave an update on the state of the Chinese pork industry.
Their industry has been rapidly rebuilding after being devastated by the African Swine Fever (ASF) virus. The trend is less small and backyard pro-duction and more large, modern farms.
- There are now more than 40 million sows in China. To put this in perspective the U. S. sow inventory from the USDA June report was 6.23 million sows.
- Due to this expansion, the extremely high market prices that were seen for approximately 2 years have now dropped to the point that some producers are losing money. Despite this, his opinion was that China will still continue to import pork from the U.S. because of our lower cost of production.
- Some new farms continue to be farrow to finish but many are moving to multi-site production, taking a page from the U.S. industry.
- One new project will sell 2.1 million pigs annually and has a feed mill and packing plant on site.
- Some buildings are being built with multiple levels of pigs (“Highrise barns”) due to the lack of space in the country. Costs for this are estimated to be 30% more than traditional construction.
- Due to the extremely high hog density and disease pressure they are also implementing filtration systems in many new farms plus retrofitting some old farms with filters. In addition to PRRS, China also has many diseases that are not pre-sent in the U.S. including ASF, Hog Cholera, Foot and Mouth Disease, Pseudorabies virus (PRV) among others.
INSECT CONTROL
Outside the Barn:
Optimate® CS, Tempo SC
Inside the Barn:
Microcare 3% CS, ULD BP-100, Stryker™ Insecticide
While much needed rainfall provided relief, it may cause the headache associated with an uptick of mosquitoes and insects. Along with the products that can be applied either on the pig or to the premise, there are also environmental factors that need to be tended to when insects are a problem. The following are all important components of insect control:
- Routine lawn mowing
- Eliminating standing water on the site
- Removing water from curtains on a regular basis
- Leaving the lights off in the barn at night
Click here to view our July 2015 Newsletter with product application rates.
SVC Biosecurity Updates
You may have noticed the mess behind SVC this spring as we have been building an enclosed lift for unloading trucks. Once this is completed there will also be biosecure points for farms to pick up orders, both during and after business hours.
We will also be installing UV/Ozone equipment for disinfecting shoes. These will be installed at the key access points to enter SVC as part of our biosecurity project. Stay tuned for more information as these projects are completed this summer.
SVC Office Hours: Monday through Friday 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM
No portion of this newsletter may be used/copied without written consent of Swine Vet Center
Department of Animal Science. Dr. Mitloehner’s expertise is in greenhouse gasses and his topic was called “INDUSTRY SUSTAINABILITY AND FAKE MEAT – IMPACT & IMPLICATIONS”. In this, he talked about just how little impact meat production has on greenhouse gasses. So far “lab meats” (muscle fiber that is grown in the lab) are not available and only plant-based products are on the market.
(National Poultry Improvement Council) and presented a case that per-haps pork producers need to look at, which is the poultry model of standing together and achieving a policy that would address biosecurity and developing a plan to combat foreign animal disease.
In the afternoon, there were numerous breakout sessions. Dr. Tim Loula and Dr. Chris Sievers of Swine Vet Center led a very interactive session where participants got to vote on numerous nursery production procedures.
