Good Production Practice: Managing Herd Health

Contrary to popular belief, the way to make money in hog farming is to get as many nice, plump, and healthy pigs to market with as little additional cost as possible.  Things that make hog farming expensive are: antibiotics, unsanitary facilities, poorly maintained facilities, and ignorance towards better practices.  How do we fight these additional costs?

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" (Benjamin Franklin) definitely holds true when it comes to pig health. Clean, dry, and well-ventilated barns have healthy pigs.  Keeping food and water fresh and available also keeps pigs healthy.  Checking daily for any signs of sickness, such as off-color, lethargy, and skinniness helps to identify at-risk pigs.  Anything we can do on the farm to keep pigs from getting sick is much more cost effective than treating them after an outbreak.  We work with our vets, like I mentioned in the last post, to decide when to use feed grade antibiotics or water medication, a vaccine, or a shot of antibiotics.

(Clean, healthy, pig, who is moving so much I can't take a clear picture) 

 People usually don't like the idea of giving an antibiotic in the feed, or water, but here is an example where we would use antibiotics.  When pigs weigh about 60 lbs., they move to a bigger barn.  This is like graduating out of elementary school, and into a middle/high school.  Everything is bigger and different, more suited to a full size animal.  When they arrive in the new facility, even though it is cleaned and sanitized, they are exposed to new germs, and often get sick.  In this situation we would feed an antibiotic to combat the sickness, which in our herd is a type of respiratory infection.  This is easier on the pigs than going through and giving each one a shot, since it is less stressful, it works quickly, and it is much safer for our employees, who don't have to handle needles and antibiotics.  It is also less expensive and saves time.  

Anytime we use an antibiotic on the farm, we have to follow the proper dosage for the size of the animal, treat the specific disease we tested for, and follow the proper withdrawal time before any pigs are sold out of the same barn.  On our farm, we even have an extra withdrawal time of 2 weeks before the pigs are sold that we do not use any type of antibiotic treatment.  This is to make sure that we do not send any animals that have been recently sick, or still on a medicine.  

Any time a pig gets sick, the opportunity for the farm to make money on that pig goes down.  They require extra care in the way of stockperson time, plus treatment, vet consultations, etc.  This means that we can't afford to have the pigs get sick if at all possible.  We try to manage the things we can control in order to keep our pigs healthy.