The 2TS
Focus on Finishing conferences are well underway this week. One of the
speakers, Yolande Seddon, is a research fellow at the Canadian Prairie Swine Centre
and has highlighted the problem of subclinical disease: it can’t actually be
seen and yet it can cause considerable growth losses in the finishing herd.
BUT, the
good news is there is a lot that can be done (and at a low cost) to reduce the
impact of subclinical disease.
Monitoring
water consumption, using simple health scores – like recording the amount of
coughing – and weighing pigs regularly can all identify trends.
Weighing
pigs is definitely worth the time, as it targets where to make changes which
can, ultimately, mean less overall effort for greater results. So, if producers
are to start doing just one new thing straight away, then biting the bullet and
weighing some pigs is what Yolande suggests!
Yolande
also spoke about exciting work with the team at the University of Newcastle ,
measuring immune proteins in pig saliva to help spot subclinical disease.
Saliva was
collected by providing pigs with ropes to chew on – much easier and cheaper
than blood sampling. The concentrations of immune proteins in saliva samples
were related to reductions in pig growth.
Researchers
at Newcastle
and AHVLA are continuing this work so that, soon, saliva sampling could offer a
low-cost disease surveillance method.
Click
here to read more in Yolande’s full presentation.
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