Midwest Pork Conference- 3 ways to get Piglets off to a Good Start

One of the best things about the Midwest Pork Conference is that the topics are always timely, and the speakers give action points that we can take home and use the next day on the farm.  Most of the time the tips aren't groundbreaking, but it gets us back to basics and really focusing on how to set the pigs up for success.  One of the best seminars from the Conference was on caring for pigs after weaning.

Weaning is one of the first major stressors (after birth) in a little pig's life.  Separation from mom, a new house, figuring out eating solid food, and drinking water are big learning experiences.  Anything we can do as caretakers to ease the process will help the pigs get off to a good start.  If we did our best to have healthy, well cared for pigs pre-weaning it helps a lot, but there are still some tips and tricks that will get the pigs started off right.

1. Keep it clean!

Having a clean, warm, and dry pen for the pigs to be weaned into reduces the risk for disease to develop and spread.  Between groups of wean pigs, we make sure to wash and disinfect every surface- from the floor to the ceiling- then allow them to dry overnight.  Rooms are heated to approximately 84 degrees, so it's nice and cozy for the little ones coming in.  When checking barns each day, we start with the youngest and move to the oldest.  This is to keep the little pigs safe from anything that might be going around in the older pigs.  Just like people, pigs will get the flu, or a cold, but the older they are when they get it, the less problems they will face.

2. Make Water easy to Find

While little pigs are on the sow, they have water available, but if everything is going good with mom they may not ever use it.  This means when the pigs are weaned they have to figure out a new drinking system- either out of a nipple, bowl, or pan.  We train the pigs to drink a few different ways, depending on what type of system is in place in the barn. 

For our older barns, there are water nipples with bowls underneath them.  We loosen the nipples so they leak into the bowls, and the pigs will drink from the bowls the first few days.  After a few days, they find the nipples, train themselves how to use them, and we can stop the leaking. This takes the caretaker observing how the pigs are doing and deciding when they are trained well enough to drink out of the nipples.  In our newer barns we have shallow, gravity-fed pans that fill with a fresh supply of water constantly.  These are easy for the pigs to find, and they pretty much manage themselves.  Of course, all systems have to be monitored, but it seems like the little pigs figure this out pretty fast.

3. Transition from Milk to Dry Feed

For the early part of a pig's life, all nutrition comes from mother's milk.  Over that time, the pigs grow and change rapidly.  Their guts begin to develop for solid food, and if left on mom long enough they will start to get a scour (diarrhea) from not having solid food available to eat.  The start of transitioning pigs to solid food begins while the piglet is still in its litter.  For the week before weaning, we provide a little bit of solid feed to the pigs each day.  This allows them to get used to the sight, smell, and taste of the solid food they will be eating after weaning. 

Once weaned, we make sure the feeders are full of this rich, yummy- smelling feed.  The pigs probably recognize it as something familiar from pre-weaning, and usually will go to it within the first day- which is pretty fast considering how much stress they have been under.  For the smaller pigs that might not be so sure, we can feed them on a rubber mat.  On the mat we may mix the feed with an electrolyte gel (think Pedialyte in "Gu" form) to give them an extra boost, since the piglets that avoid feed are probably also the ones that have a slow start on drinking, too.  We will only do this for a couple of days, and then transition to the feeder.

By doing these 3 things we minimize stress, begin to transition the gut, and provide a healthy environment for the young piglets.  Next week, we will look at the hot-button issue of reducing antibiotic use on farms.  For some background information, check my posts on How we work with our Vets, Manage Herd Health, and as an industry Manage Antibiotic Use.

 

Good Production Practice: Using Antibiotics Responsibly

(New Barn Progress- pouring the floor)

In my last post on good production practices, I went into how our farm uses antibiotics to treat pigs when they are sick.  Antibiotics are part of how we take care of our animals.  However, that isn't the only way that we mange our hog health.  There are 5 areas we look at to responsibly manage our antibiotic use.  These steps will change in the coming years, as regulation changes.

First, we do what we can to use less antibiotics.  This means cleaning boots, clothes, and gloves.  We don't want to wear a pair of boots with one group of animals, and then drive over to another group and spread bacteria from the first group.  We also clean and disinfect barns and trucks between groups of pigs.  If I am going to see pigs in the same barn, I start with the youngest ones first, so I don't track bugs from the oldest pigs down to the youngest ones.

Next, when a pig gets sick we treat it.  After it is treated, we look to see if there is any interference that is causing the sickness.  Did the barn get to warm and muggy? Did some of the bird netting at the top of the barn come down, and allow the birds and pigs to have contact?  Did the pigs run out of feed or water for part of a day?  Is something in the barn broken? In a perfect world, none of these things happen, but in reality, little problems occur all of the time.  Once we identify the cause of the sickness, we can be a lot more proactive in preventing it.

When deciding whether or not to use an antibiotic, we have to see if it makes sense.  For example. a virus like PEDv wouldn't respond to an antibiotic treatment.  Trying to treat it with an antibiotic would be throwing money away.  When choosing to use an antibiotic, we have to make sure there is a measurable gain- this can be less pigs die from a disease, or improved performance, at such a rate that it justifies the cost of the drug.

As you probably know, most our pigs are raised from 60 lbs. to market weight in an Amish barn.  If a pig is starting to show signs of getting sick, the Amish barn manager has to make a decision on what to do.  All of the barn managers are trained at the company, state, and industry levels on how to handle antibiotics.  They are provided with information on storage, dosage, length of use, withdrawal times, and on how to keep accurate treatment records for best traceability.

What our barn managers aren't doing is diagnosing illnesses.  We leave that to the universities and veterinarians.  By working with our vets and diagnostic labs, we can make the most informed decisions on how to best care for our animals.  Sometimes a barn will be diagnosed with a disease in a few pigs that never really breaks into the whole barn. The manager will store the antibiotics until they need them for another outbreak, (returning them would violate our cleaning standards) or if we do not need them again and they expire, we will dispose of them per our vet's guidelines.

These five areas help us to manage our herd health responsibly.  In five years, I know that these guidelines will change due to changing consumer preferences on antibiotic use in production agriculture, and that doesn't really bother me.  I try to do the best I can with the tools I have, however, if I ignore alternatives to antibiotics, or consumer preferences, the farm will not make it very far.  Moving forward, we have to look at what opportunities are out there to make pork production better- for the people and the pigs.  


 

Founding Farmer

Yesterday was my Grandpa's 84th birthday.  Anytime we have a birthday in the family, we all get together and have a party.  Sometimes it is just cake and ice cream, other times it is a full meal, but always involves grandparents, parents, and kids.  We always talk about different things we have done together, and what we are going to do next.

(Grandma and Grandpa at the birthday party)

Whenever it comes up to Grandpa's birthday his story always involves the farm, and surprising to some, canoeing.  Grandpa and Grandma met at Michigan State University where Grandma was studying to be a teacher, and Grandpa was studying to be a farmer.  They went to England for a year while Grandpa was part of the ROTC program, and then came home to my Grandma's family farm in Iowa.  After a few years in Iowa, realizing that the farm couldn't support the three families, they picked up and moved to Michigan for cheap farm land.  The first years were hard, and Grandpa sold the mineral rights to the land in order to keep the farm afloat.  He constantly looked for areas to make improvement.  Even from the start, our farm has made it's own feed, all because Grandpa thought it was a good thing to do.  He is willing to try things just to see what will happen, and is able to innovate because of it.  

Grandpa and Grandma starting canoeing in order to get away from the farm on the weekends.  They had employees who always would call in on Saturday mornings, then on Sunday mornings.  Grandpa had done some canoe races as a kid on the Maumee River, and decided that canoeing would be a good hobby to keep him from working all the weekends.  It was something to get away, and he could race with Grandma.  The farm and paddling have defined the family ever since.  We work and play together.