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Swine management
Pig production is the systematic rearing of pig breeds on scientifically based management principles for economic benefit. The main objectives of pig production are to provide consumers with pig meat and related products and to generate income for farmers.
Pig production plays a significant role in the livestock industry, providing an important source of protein and other valuable products. The systematic approach to pig rearing ensures that the pigs are healthy and well-cared for, which in turn leads to better quality products and higher yields. The focus on scientific principles and efficient management helps to reduce waste and increase profitability for farmers.
A swine producer who masters the art of good management has excellent profit opportunities. This is especially true with disease prevention and control. A healthy herd of good-growing, quality breeding animals — adequately fed and housed — provides maximum profit opportunities for the owner who does not over-spend for facilities and/or feed.
Introduction: Effects of 5 to 150 ppm gaseous ammonia onto respiratory health and production data in pigs have been described in literature with varying results. Ammonia is known to cause oxidative stress in epithelial cells, to irritate nociceptors and to disturb the mucocillary clearance. In addition, a pH-shift within the epithelial lining fluid covering the airways with the consequence of an efficacy loss of pH-dependent natural antibacterial peptides is assumed. In...
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Introduction: The wean-to-farrow interval is comprised of two stochastic periods, the wean-to-service interval and gestation length. Variation in the wean-to-farrow interval can be affected by many biological factors as well as by management strategies like induced farrowing, multiple weanings/week and products which facilitate single, fixed-time AI like OvuGel®. The opportunity cost consequence of variation in a sow group’s wean-to-farrow interval is the...
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Speculation over the Provisional Ruling on Anti-dumping Duties of Lysine by the EU Against China
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Introduction: Cooperation and joint technical knowledge of vets and farm managers (experts) are needed for effective pig farming. They have a real influence on production indices and on manifestation and predisposing factors of Porcine Respiratory Disease Complex (PRDC). At the same time the ineffective farm management is responsible for imprudent overuse of antibiotics and economic losses. In this study we surveyed Hungarian, Czech and Slovak swine farm experts’ opinion...
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Introduction: Animal welfare, has been traditionally evaluated by measuring level of aggression and stress parameters. However, feeding behavior can also provide a valuable indication of comfort or stress for gestating sows in large groups, when fed with ESF systems. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted at Albesa-Ramadera a 3300 sow, Site 1 farm, based in Catalonia, Spain. The farm has large group gestation (128 to 175 sows per group) and utilizes...
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Biodegradation of Mycotoxins: A Biotechnological Innovation for Safe Animal Feed
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Introduction: Preweaning mortality of piglets remains a welfare as well as an economic concern in commercial swine herds. Post mortem examination can give insight in specific preventive measures. Materials and Methods: A thorough investigation of preweaning piglet mortality was conducted in 14 loose housed Norwegian piglet producing herds. All dead piglets from one batch of sows in each herd, in total 1216 piglets from 378 sows, were collected for...
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Introduction: Claw lesions in piglets are common. The neonatal claw is sensible for factors such as floor temperature and roughness, and possible residuals from disinfectants. Also selenium (Se) intoxication and ergot alkaloids have been related to claw lesions. The present case describes the occurrence of hemorrhagic claw lesions in neonatal piglets of a commercial farrow-to-finish pig herd in Flanders. Materials and Methods: The herd consisted of 270 JSR...
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Introduction: In 1998 the Dutch government issued that from 2013 sows must be housed in social groups within 5 days after insemination, in addition to EC directive 2008/120. In 2014, the government issued a project to aid farmers, which had reported, on request, negative effects of group housing in the first 4 weeks on welfare and reproduction (n=347), to overcome these effects. Focus of the project was on the interventions to chronic physical stress, as this is an important...
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Introduction: It is a classical but unproven hypothesis that pigs can serve as intermediate hosts between birds and humans in the generation of novel pandemic influenza viruses. Yet the single pandemic virus of likely swine origin is the 2009 pandemic H1N1 virus (2009 pdm), a virus with genetic components of swine, human and avian origin (reassortant). The latter virus has become well adapted to pigs and humans and is now widespread in both species. Avian H9N2 viruses are...
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Introduction: Tail biting is a serious welfare problem in pigs, causing substantial economic losses. In the majority of the EU countries, tail docking is used to reduce the incidence of tail biting. However, many of the risk factors for tail biting are related to suboptimal management, and tail biting can be reduced by corrective management decisions. There are few studies on which preventive measures producers themselves value as most important. Materials and...
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Introduction: African swine fever (ASF) disease was eradicated from domestic swine herds in Brazil in 1984, after six years of hard work, determination and with highly cost due to the occurrence in pig small farms. The ASF virus (ASFV) belongs to the family Asfarviridae being the only member of Asfivirus genus. Our previous studies on ASFV epizootiology and virulence demonstrated that virus has dispersed from the first ASF outbreak in pig herds in Paracambi city of state...
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Speculation over the Provisional Ruling on Anti-dumping Duties of Lysine by the EU Against China
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Introduction: Altrenogest is used worldwide to synchronise sexual cycle of replacement gilts before their introduction in the reproductive herd. Objective of this study was to test efficacy of a 0.4% altrenogest oral solution (Virbagest®, Virbac) for gilts synchronization in a large Korean farm. Materials and Methods: Selected herd comprises 2,500 sows managed according to 1-week batch farrowing. Twenty to 30 replacement gilts are introduced weekly in each...
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Introduction: In Flanders, the Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome virus (PRRSv) and Porcine Circovirus 2 (PCV2) are endemic on most herds and recognised as two major pathogens with a significant economic impact in the domestic pig. In order to monitor the infection status of a herd concerning PRRSv and PCV2 a voluntary program started in February 2015 with financial support of the Belgian Fund for Animal Health (For more details, refer to the companion...
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Biodegradation of Mycotoxins: A Biotechnological Innovation for Safe Animal Feed
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Introduction: The porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome (PRRS) is a major viral disease in swine production. In most cases, farmers decide whether to control this disease or not within their herd on a voluntary basis. Nevertheless, individual decisions have an impact on the risk for other farmers to be infected. Since some farmers are grouped in associations/geographical areas, it is relevant to investigate how a group of farmers can coordinate individual...
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Introduction: Influenza A virus (IAV) is economically important in pig production and has broad public health implications. Because of public health concerns, some geographic areas have IAV monitoring in swine initiated. In Europe, active IAV surveillance includes demonstration IAV RNA in nasal swabs or oral fluids and/or demonstration of antibodies in serum (SER) samples; however, collecting appropriate numbers of individual pig samples can be costly and...
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Introduction: Hoof lesions, which are very common in modern sows, were associated with high risk of early culling and compromised welfare of sows. Some hoof lesions were also associated with decreased litter weight, increased pre-weaning piglet mortality and higher odds of stillborn and crushed piglets. Evidently, if hoof lesions negatively affect not only sow longevity but also the important reproductive parameters which determine the utilisation of breeding herd’s...
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Introduction: Extended-spectrum penicillins have a similar spectrum of activity to 2nd and 3rd generation cephalosporins and they include aminopenicillins such as amoxicillin and ampicillin and amoxicillin in combination with clavulanic acid. Bacterial resistance to extended-spectrum penicillins has evolved rapidly in recent years specially in Enterobacteriaceae because these bacteria could carry beta-lactamases capable of hydrolyzing important beta-lactam...
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Introduction: In sows and weaned pigs, oral fluids (OF) are usually sampled with cotton ropes and used for serological analysis or direct identification of pathogens. OF sampling is easy, quick and of low stress for animals, being suitable for group diagnosis since OF samples represent a pool of saliva from different pigs from the same pen. The aim of this study was to investigate if it is feasible to collect OF samples from sucklers, in farrowing...
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Introduction: Automatically collected feeder data may be used to predict tail biting in finisher pigs. Materials and Methods: Pen-level feeding behaviour and growth were investigated in relation to injurious tail biting (ITB), defined as visible wounds, from 10 weeks before to 4 weeks after the first ITB case in the pen. The data set included 36 pens of 10-12 intact boars between 43 and 148 kg, with average pen weight at ITB onset between 78 and 137 kg. A tail...
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Speculation over the Provisional Ruling on Anti-dumping Duties of Lysine by the EU Against China
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Introduction: An effective insemination management is the basis for a successful piglet production. Hormonal stimulation and synchronization is common practice in farms, mostly using equine chorionic gonadotropin (eCG). A FTI protocol is now available using Buserelin (Porceptal®, MSD Animal Health), a synthetic GnRH-analog compound. The main feature of this protocol is the requirement for only one insemination per sow. This study was conducted to compare the FTI with...
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Introduction: Surveillance systems are critical for accurate and timely monitoring and effective disease control. The use of statistical quality control methods for monitoring endemic diseases which are part of compulsory surveillance programs has not been previously explored. It is important to monitor changes of for instance disease prevalence, which might indicate disease spread. Thus allowing control efforts to be triggered immediately. Materials and...
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