Just because summer heat is around the corner, don’t be fooled into thinking your winter infection worries are gone. While viruses such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) have historically struck swine herds more in cold months, the reality is that under the right conditions, your pigs can contract viral illnesses in the summer as well. In fact, Midwest veterinarians and producers tend to see more PRRS outbreaks this time of year with our warm days and chilly nights.
Disease biosecurity is just one area in which you as a swine producer do not want to become fatigued as we head into summertime. It may be tempting to ease off on some of the precautions you took in the winter to hold off viruses, but “seasonality” for PRRS as well as influenza, deltacoronavirus and porcine epidemic diarrhea is not as defined as it used to be.
Don’t Let Up
It is still important in these warmer months to stick to your truck-washing, as well as changing/washing routines for entering a barn or moving between barns. Lessening or eliminating wildlife vectors such as rodents and migratory birds is also key.
Carthage System’s Chief Operating Officer Shaun McGinn, who oversees day-to-day management of Professional Swine Management (PSM) farms, explains that part of each farm manager’s summer-prep checklist is replacing and resetting rodent bait boxes to maintain weekly throughout the season.
Birds, which are especially attracted to on-farm compost, are carriers of all sorts of potential viral infections. One trick McGinn said works for their farms comes from the world of used cars, of all places. “I always thought those colorful, waving ‘dancing men’ on car lots were just some gimmick, until I found out they’re there to scare off the birds that might leave droppings on the clean cars,” he explains. So, PSM tried this on its farms — turns out birds don’t like these modern scarecrows near pig barns, either.
In addition to these efforts, don’t neglect doing the simplest thing you can to try to prevent disease: Make sure your pigs are caught up on vaccines, especially season-specific ones such as those against bacterial infections that tend to flourish in hot, humid weather. It’s frustrating to lose animals to an infection that could have been avoided or at least curbed better with a comparatively inexpensive vaccine.
Virus reminders
A virus that does tend to circulate more in warm weather is Seneca Valley Virus (SVV), a vesicular disease with clinical symptoms nearly identical to foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). Last year, the Midwest saw an increase in SVV vesicular lesions, or blisters. This can also present in diarrhea as a symptom, so if you start seeing this in piglets, it’s important to address right away, as SVV can cause 30-40 percent mortality among these babies.
Another important thing to know about lesions is that you should immediately report any you find to your veterinarian and the state vet and seek lab testing to eliminate FMD as the culprit. FMD is considered a foreign animal disease, which has stricter protocols for reporting and treatment. We hope this kind of report is overkill and that it’s not FMD — as we used to say in vet school, though, “I don’t want to be the first vet to find a foreign animal disease, but I don’t want to be the first vet to miss it.”
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