Fine-tune your feed costs

Prairie Swine Centre researchers John Patience, Harold Gonyo and Stephane Lemay recently studied production points producers should review in tough economic times. For example, overfeeding calcium and phosphorus by 0.1 per cent can cost $1.25 to $1.50 per pig.

High nutrient levels boost pig throughput but the researchers stress a ration which makes sense when pork is $1.95 per kg may be impractical when it falls to $1.45. Overfeeding lysine can cost $3 to $5 per pig.

"Smart buying of ingredients," the study found, can "easily add $2 to $3 to the bottom line." Five-per cent feed wastage costs at least $3 per pig.

Nipple drinkers typically cause water wastage of 40 per cent, increasing the cost of manure hauling by 60 cents per pig. Wet-dry feeders are the answer, the researchers say.

Many factors dictate optimum shipping weight. An earlier study showed even a modest change in shipping weight can increase or decrease net income by $2.50 per pig.

Every extra pig sold per sow per year reduces cost of production by about two per cent or $3 per pig sold. Split sex and phase feeding increase net income by about $4.50. - Robert Irwin

© copyright 1998 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.



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Salmonellosis, pigs and food safety

Farmers have been fighting the bug for years, but the battleground now shifts to the consumer's plate Salmonella infections in pigs are usually caused by two types - salmonella choleraesuis and salmonella typhimurium. Neither of these is new to pigs. We've dealt with them for decades, perhaps as long as we've been raising pigs commercially. These historical patterns, however, have undergone considerable change over the last decade.

Salmonellosis (disease caused by infection with the salmonella bacterium) used to mean outbreaks septicemia caused by salmonella choleraesuis. Eighty-five to 90 per cent of salmonella outbreaks were due to s. choleraesuis. Outbreaks occurred primarily in nursery and grow-finish pigs, characterized by pigs off feed, developing a fever, turning purple, panting and dying suddenly.

Often, the first signs of a problem are sudden death in a few pigs and the discovery of several pigs, all panting and exhibiting purple bellies, ears and snouts. Scours, when present, is a late event in an s. choleraesuis outbreak. It should be noted, however, that s. choleraesuis is one of very few disease organisms that causes both panting and scours simultaneously in grow-finish pigs.

The second common form of salmonella in pigs was s. typhimurium. Diarrhea was the predominant sign with s. typhimurium. After these two types of Salmonella infections, the few remaining cases were due to one or other of the more than 2,000 different salmonella serotypes that occur in nature. Occasionally, one of these "other" salmonella serotypes would be more prevalent than s. typhimurium for months, up to two years.

For instance, 12 to 14 years ago, s. muenster outbreaks were occurring in dairy cattle in Ontario and there was enough "spillover" into pigs that outbreaks of s. muenster overtook s. typhimurium in pigs for a few years. This pattern is right now being repeated by s. typhimurium DT 104, another salmonella from cattle, which is showing up in pigs.

In the early and mid-1990s, outbreaks of s. choleraesuis virtually ceased in Ontario and right across Canada, leaving only the occasional outbreak of s. typhimurium and even less commonly an outbreak of diarrhea from one of the other salmonella serotypes.

Outbreaks of s. choleraesuis are rare now. Diarrhea outbreaks due to s. typhimurium and some of the other serotypes, however, are occurring repeatedly in fills of all-in, all-out finisher barns, even after what appears to be thorough cleanout and cleanup. Most cases occur in finisher barns. They are also occurring in new startups and recent repops. In hindsight, we probably should have anticipated salmonella outbreaks among the "new" diseases we could have expected in our SEW systems.

Treatment, prevention
The sources of these "new" cases of s. typhimurium are not specifically known. Pigs, the environment, feed, other animals and birds, people, are all likely candidates. Clinical cases are treated with antibiotics. However, many of these new cases are subclinical, with no signs of sickness in pigs. Control is focused primarily on sanitation of the barn (environment) between groups.

Another area of concern surrounds food safety and public health issues. Pigs with subclinical infections can shed salmonella, contaminating other pigs at slaughter, and carcasses after slaughter. salmonella thus enters the food chain through contaminated carcasses, resulting in possible human salmonella food poisoning down the line.

The food safety and public health issues are, if anything, of even greater concern since they are damaging to our entire industry. It is even more insidious since these "other" salmonellas are seldom of any clinical concern to the pig. That is, they seldom cause disease in the pig - but they very definitely cause people to become sick. They are among the most common causes of food poisoning in people.
S. Ernest Sanford, DVM, is with Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (Canada)

© copyright 1998 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.



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Surfing slurry sites

Farm & Country PORK swine/computer guru Robert Irwin goes surfing for waste on the web

Type the word "manure" into the Alta Vista search engine and you'll get more than 67,600 possible web sites. Even allowing for the usual search engine duplication and errors, that's still a lot of cyberspace to cover if you have a nutrient management question.

In fact, Ontario pork producers only need one URL. Every wired pork producer should bookmark ManureNet: http://res.agr.ca/manurenet/

Web master Bruce Bowman says that by Christmas the site, which has been operating as a prototype, will be set up on a new Oracle relational database that will allow state-of-the-art search capability. From what I've seen, this means no other manure resource anywhere in the world will come close to ManureNet's usefulness.

If you like to be on the cutting edge of the industry it would be a good idea to check the site every month or two for changes in this rapidly evolving field. ManureNet is sponsored by the Hog Environmental Management Strategy (HEMMS), a joint venture between Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. (AAFC) and the pork industry to reduce environmental constraints to hog expansion.

Do you think two acronyms in the one sentence above is pushing it a bit? I think a glance at ManureNet, where gems such as WQWG (Water Quality Working Group), CARC (Canadian Agri-Food Research Council), and OFEC (Ontario Farm Environmental Coalition) exist, will convince you that the manure business is as rich in acronyms, committees and subcommittees as it is in soil nutrients. But I digress.

Farm & Country readers may recall past articles featuring the Delta Engineering research project, which uses ski-hill snowmaking technology to purify liquid manure and reduce odours. ManureNet contains a link to the Delta project and an ever-growing list of innovative technologies. Biosor, a system developed by Centre de Recherche Industrielle du Québec (CRIQ), is among them.

Biosor is said to reduce building odours by 95 per cent, as well as smell during transport and spreading. The system utilizes bio filtres such as peat, wood chips and bark for both exhaust fan air and the decanted, separated liquid portion of the manure.

In the Manure Management Expertise in Canada category, ManureNet offers e-mail contact with the leading authorities in each province.

Does the Canadian government care about the estimated 24.4 million tonnes of pig manure produced on our farms and what is it doing about the problem? ManureNet has a link that allows you to read the feds' comprehensive outlook online, or download it in zipped format.

There is also a province-by-province inventory that contains a brief description of dozens of manure-related research projects. Where available, the list provides links to home pages for the projects or research extracts.

One project caught my eye: a Nova Scotia study, which is trying to determine whether it is possible to delineate the source of bacterial contamination of groundwater through bacterial genotyping techniques. This seems to be the kind of thing Lake Huron groups were attempting last year with mixed results.

Odour control is also a popular topic on ManureNet. Recent studies reported include solutions ranging from oligolysis (passing a current through a manure tank), to use of a windbreak fence and a suspended plastic cover.

ManureNet contains a section on university programs. It provides a link to the University of Guelph site, which is well worth the visit.

The University has divided manure research by categories, which include collection, storage, spreading, animal feed and crop use. The Guelph site is also the place to download the University's free manure management software, MCLONE3.

The Codes of Practice Acts and Regulations section of ManureNet, as you might expect, links to environmental documents such as the Canadian Pork Council's Environmental Code of Practice for Hog Production in Canada and Ontario's Environmental Bill of Rights. By spending a few minutes browsing you can decide for yourself whether you are on a level playing field with producers in other provinces, although the link to Quebec's program was broken when I visited.

This section also includes links to a fully searchable site containing all Ontario statutes as well as a list of all regulations administered by Agriculture Canada. It covers most of the red tape a pork producer anywhere in Canada is likely to encounter on any topic.

The Factsheet Extension Bulletin category allows online reading of environmentally related factsheets published by government and university authorities across Canada. "Odour, Noise and Dust Complaints and the Farm Practices Protection Act," a factsheet by Mike Toombs, is included among dozens of publications.

© copyright 1998 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.



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