There are two categories of routine monitoring of a swine herd that Carthage Veterinary Service Veterinarian Elise Toohill, DVM, recommends. A good place to start is a baseline assessment of how well the producer’s current swine health program is coming along.
Such a program includes everything the producer is doing to maintain pig health and set the animals up for growth success — starting with the vaccination and acclimation of replacement gilts into the sow herd, to extra measures for the sow before it’s bred and prior to her farrowing, to best prepare the sow to pass along maximum immunity to her piglets.
Category Two is gauging an operation’s biosecurity risks and protocols. This might include incipient testing of pigs before putting a new protocol into place, such as cleaning trucks — then following up later with tests to gauge if the cost of making that change was worthwhile.
Another example is if the producer faces a clinical outbreak of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus in the finishing period, they might choose to add routine testing before the finishing stage to understand when and how often sites are breaking, and whether additional biosecurity protocols are necessary.
Selecting your protocols
As for the testing protocols to include, “It varies depending on the virus or bacteria,” Toohill said. “We find some are simpler to treat with vaccines and antibiotics, so it really depends on which ones we can accurately test status and more easily prevent or control. Circovirus is a good example — the vaccines work well, so pigs shouldn’t contract it. But if you take sow processing fluids and those are showing low CTs or the virus, it could indicate something interfering with the vaccine’s ability to work or could show a gap in vaccine protocol.”
Also, “as we as an industry move toward ever more responsible use of antibiotics, realizing the endemic bacteria pigs routinely have is going to be more important, especially if we start to rely more on autogenous vaccines instead of antibiotics for healthy pigs. Those are situations where the regular tissue diagnostics are going to be valuable.”
To decide on protocols for routine testing, Toohill begins with a common factor: Herd mortality, and how a producer wants to address it. Mortality a ready metric from which everyone can work, after all. Does the producer want to reduce mortality in their herd a specific percentage? How low?
“If a producer is willing to accept higher mortality rates, they may not wish to invest in such detailed routine testing costs, or for as many conditions, especially if they need to make spending reductions somewhere,” she explained.
Another means of settling on testing protocols is to ask a producer if they observe their animals exhibiting clinical signs of illness, consistently, at particular stages of development. Are they seeing diarrhea? Lameness? Coughing? This both helps narrow down diseases for which to routinely test and establishes when the testing will be most helpful for future pigs.
Oral fluids are simple enough for a producer to collect themselves, as are fecal samples and fecal or nasal swabs, said Toohill. Tissue collection is more specialized, but producers and farm workers can learn it and do not always need a vet. Blood testing requires more training but again, with practice, non-vets can learn this skill as necessary.
If a producer cannot put into place a frequent testing program, they can collect processing fluids and freeze, which is valuable if clinical signs of an illness present later for a disease such as PRRS. Being able to test those fluids may help in determining when the virus entered the herd and can help in updating biosecurity protocols to guard better against it. Toohill recommends keeping frozen samples for up to three months.
Stick with your decision
Producers should begin with the mindset that they will abide by the results of testing they settle on, and that they be willing to adjust their testing program for need, cost and other factors they determine most important for their operation.
“If you aren’t going to do something different as a result of diagnostic testing showing you that you should, why spend the money?” Toohill said. “As you and your vet build out your program, it’s key to build in routines to review the diagnostics and discuss next steps, to get the best return on your investment.”
Carthage Veterinary Service relies on science and experience to provide unique and practical solutions to achieve the best outcomes for producers and their animals. Our teams work with producers and our production teams daily, and have a deep understanding of the challenges and intricacies of swine nutrition.
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Elise Toohill, DVM, has been a Veterinarian with Carthage Veterinary Service since 2018. She is certified through the National Pork Board’s Pork Quality Assurance Plus and Transport Quality Assurance programs, as well as a member of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians and Operation Main Street Speaker. She received her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine.
Live link:
https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/livestock-management/establishing-sticking-with-testing-protocols-to-prevent-herd-disease
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