Farming Talk: Keep tabs on pig weight to reduce losses
More pig producers should 'bite the bullet' and weigh their growing pigs to cut lost earnings. That was a key conclusion from our 2TS Focus on Finishing conference, in Stourton, West Midlands.
Yolande Seddon, research fellow from the Prairie Swine Centre in Canada, showed how subclinical disease can cause considerable growth losses on finishing units and is a problem because it can't actually be seen.
But there is a lot that can be done at a low cost to identify underlying health problems and reduce their impact, for example: using simple health scores like recording the amount of coughing and weighing pigs more often.
Yolande said weighing pigs is worth the time as it helps target where to make changes which can, ultimately, mean less overall effort for greater results.
Also, before she moved to Canada, Yolande and the team at the University of Newcastle investigated two other simple techniques that could act as an 'early warning system' for disease problems in finisher herds, to help producers recognise where disease is circulating on their unit.
The first, monitoring water intake, is something pig producers can look at starting immediately on their units. They found that water consumption in diseased pigs differed from those of healthy pigs, showing how automated monitoring of water consumption could provide a tool for identifying health problems.
The second tool, measuring immune proteins in pig saliva, is a new idea in development. Saliva was collected by providing pigs with ropes to chew on in their pens.
They found the concentrations of immune proteins in saliva samples were related to reductions in pig growth, so this helps understand the degree of impact sub-clinical disease can have on productivity.
Researchers at Newcastle and AHVLA are continuing this work so that, soon, saliva sampling could offer a low-cost disease surveillance method.
All the speakers' presentations, including Shropshire pig producer Anthony Williams, are online at: www.bpex.org.uk/news/events/focusonfinishing
The event was part of BPEX's Two-Tonne Sow campaign to improve productivity throughout the English pig industry.
Angela Cliff is BPEX knowledge transfer manager for central England
