PRRS update: Through the Worst?

(Sunset over the harvest crew  in the end of November)

Since I last wrote about our fight with PRRS, quite a bit has happened.  We have lost a lot of pigs, either to stillbirth, late-terms abortions (read miscarriage),  or just non-viable piglets that only live a few hours, or maybe a day or two.  Once the pigs have made it to our nurseries, we are still seeing high death losses, which we can't really do anything about.  It has been hard on everybody, especially seeing the whole system suffer.  Two weeks about we only had 40% of our normal number of piglets sent into the nursery for the week.  We know that in 6 weeks, we will have to leave some of our finisher building unfilled for awhile, which we very rarely do, and that is emotionally and financially hard.  During the times when the barns go unfilled, we continue to pay rent on the space.   

Since my last post, we have also worked with our vets and have made some changes on how we are handling our breeding animals. We had a serum made from the blood of some sick pigs to infect all of our breeding animals that are between 50-250 lbs.  so they will have an immune response when they get to the farrowing farms.  We also changed our vaccine we give to our breeding animals that includes a booster for PRRS, along with other pig diseases.  We discontinued a water antibiotic and have told our people to only treat a pig once, and if there is no response to stop treatments, since PRRS can look like a lot of other things, and we don't want to treat something with an antibiotic when it won't be effective.  It is hard to stop treatment on animals, but sometimes it is the responsible thing to do.  

We are starting to have some hope that we have made it through the worst part of the disease.  The new litters of pigs born are looking bigger, better, and more healthy.  The sows aren't showing signs of being sick.  The farm that broke with PRRS first is starting to put out baby pigs that are negative for the disease, which is important in being able to beat it long term.  It will be encouraging to say we are over the hump, but there is still a long way to go.  Other farms that have had this strain of the virus have had a hard time shaking it, so we are expecting that it will be the same on our farm.  Only time will tell.