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

NPIC
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

A Day at the National Pork Industry Conference (NPIC)

The NPIC is one of the largest and best annual meetings for pork producers in the world. This year’s conference was held at the Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells. Many Swine Vet Center clients were in attendance as well as a good showing of our SVC veterinarians. It’s nearly impossible to take in all the information present-ed at the meeting but we’d like to share some of our take-home points from the meetings we attended on the first day of the conference.

This year’s conference kicked off with the topic of “Fake Meat” presented by Dr. Frank Mitloehner, a professor at the University of California Davis 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.

Continuing along similar lines, Rick Berman, Executive Director at the Center for Consumer Freedom presented his topic “Fake Meat – How Do We Respond? Communicating Our Message Effectively”. Mr. Berman discussed his 2 websites http://cleanfoodfacts.com and http://realfoodfacts.com and pointed out the nutritional differences between highly pro-cessed plant-based products and real pork and beef. Dr. Rodger Main, Director at the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Iowa State University gave an update on the NPIP (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.

Ken Sullivan CEO of Smithfield Foods, one of the largest pork pro-ducers in the world, spoke about Smithfield’s position on China and African Swine Fever. He did a very good job of relaying that infor-mation and what their thoughts are on fake meats. He explained how the actual ownership structure worked and said they were sending some carcasses to China— and would love to send more.

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.

Pig comfort was strongly emphasized with special attention focused on keeping the bottom-end pigs warm.
Cleaning was discussed and how important it was to break up biofilm and degrease. Cleaning waterlines was also stressed.
How many pigs needed to be pulled and restarted was de-bated with the 3-5% and 6-10% receiving the top votes. This is what the expectation should be when starting pigs.
There was a good conversation on creep feeding in farrowing and its impact in the nursery.
Mat feeding was debated with the audience agreeing that doing mat feeding 4 times a day is what works best to cover all pigs.
Another break-out session focused on pig health and was led by Dr. Joe Connor of Carthage Veterinary Service and Dr. Melissa Hench of Maschhoff Farms. In this session people got to choose the disease they wanted to focus on.
Of course, African Swine Fever was a hot topic. Clinical signs and symptoms of ASF as well as other diseases that might mimic it were covered.
PRRS was another topic discussed, in particular the new thought process of keeping the farm open longer and bringing in 4-6 months’ worth of gilts because it’s rare to go negative before that time period. These gilts would be tested with different procedures to determine when to stop their entry. They felt with this method, you could bring in more gilts and still go negative about the same time.
Cameras were discussed when the topic turned to biosecurity. It was mentioned that cameras could be used to monitor and audit how people and animals enter and exit the barn. When watching the video for major issues, it was surprising to see the number of small mistakes that were made.

Congratulations to the Jack and Lisa May family of Mankato

Congratulations to the Jack and Lisa May family of Mankato on be-ing named as Blue Earth County’s “2019 Farm Family of the Year”. The May family came to the farm in 1865 and the original May land is still a part of Jack and Lisa’s operation. The family’s main crops are corn and soybeans and they also have been contract-finishers with Wakefield Pork since the early 1990’s. The Mays have 3 grown daughters, Kathleen, Michelle and Colleen who give a hand when needed. Jack’s parents, Gene and Pat May, live just down the road— truly a generational farm family! The May family will be officially recognized August 8th in a ceremony at Farmfest in Redwood Falls.

Sources:
https://mnfarmfamilies.cfans.umn.edu/families-by-year/2019/blue-earth-county
https://www.mankatofreepress.com/news/local_news/names-and-notables-july/article_eedb6b52-a8c5-11e9-bd8e-776a6a2eb401.html

No portion of this newsletter may be used/copied without written consent of Swine Vet Center