Setting up a routine health testing program for your pigs can’t be a cookie-cutter copy of other producers’. You should take into account individual needs that align with your desired outcomes and budget constraints, to create the best screening protocols for your operation.
So, how can you start?
I recommend two types of routine swine herd monitoring. The first is a baseline assessment of your current animal health program, which includes everything you are doing to maintain pig health and set up your herd for optimal outcomes. This starts with the vaccination and acclimation of replacement gilts into the sow herd, through additional measures for the sow before it’s bred and prior to farrowing, that prepare the animal to extend the best immunity possible to her piglets.
You should also survey the effectiveness of protocols put in place to protect new piglets from the nursery through grow-finish, including vaccines and antibiotics used, as well as any feed and water medications.
The second type of monitoring is evaluating your operation’s biosecurity risks and current protocols. This could include incipient testing of pigs before instituting new protocols, such as washing trucks, then following up later with new testing to learn if the cost of making the change was worthwhile. Or, say you dealt with a clinical outbreak of porcine reproductive and respiratory virus (PRRSv) in finishing pigs — you might add routine testing for all pigs before the finishing stage, to learn when and how often sites are breaking.
In doing this, you might decide you need additional biosecurity measures. Which testing protocols you codify will vary, depending on the virus or bacteria. 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 to use here. In the normal course of things, its vaccine is effective, so pigs shouldn’t contract the disease. But if you decide to do regular testing of your sows for processing fluids and the results consistently display the presence of circovirus in significant quantities, this might indicate you have an unstable sow herd with factors that could be interfering with the vaccine’s ability to work. You could also monitor for the virus in your finishing animals to see if your vaccine protocol is correct with respect to timing, dosing, execution and product used.
Decide on Testing
Most producers tend to wait for the clinical signs of an illness to show in one or more animals, then test for diagnosis. Those who own multiple sow farms or multiple flows of pigs tend to routinely test their animals more often, since there’s more diversity in health status and they are incentivized by biosecurity requirements to focus on pathogens such as PRRSv on the move.
The routine diagnostics are dependent on the producer. A small percentage seem to be doing regular diagnostics before their pigs get sick — less than about one-fifth of producers in the industry. I suggest you begin routine diagnostics in the farrowing house, testing young piglets’ diarrhea for shedding viruses to measure the effectiveness of their sow’s pre-farrow immunization and the gilt acclimation program. You can learn if you need to change your program through things like knowing what bugs or viruses are in that diarrhea.
Keep in mind, the routine tests evolve with age. For nursery pigs, I strongly propose testing post-weaning diarrhea, which can be caused by any number of factors. You need to know what bacteria or viruses you should be targeting with prevention measures, but be flexible to change this protocol as future test results dictate.
Testing grow-finish animals might include for illnesses such as mycoplasma, ileitis and swine influenza, to name a few; it depends on the specific biosecurity measures you have and the consistent illnesses you are experiencing in your herd. For instance, if you are frequently seeing coughing weaned pigs, you may want to do monthly or quarterly nasal swabs for possible influenza or parainfluenza, as well as diagnosing which strains, to better target those viruses.
Choose times to do sample tissue testing to gauge the health status of finishing pigs, such as within a week of placement, at the end of the nursery period and then in the midst of the finishing stage. The takeaway here is to pick three time frames, then do that testing quarterly, at the least-often frequency, if you want to discover what you’re dealing with.
As the pork industry strives for 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 invaluable.
Be the Change Your Herd Needs
Finally, start with the mindset you’re going to abide by the results of the testing you’ve settled on, and be willing to adjust the testing program for need, cost and other factors as you assess your priorities along the way.
When you’re submitting diagnostic tests, you have to ask, “If I get this particular result, am I going to do something different?” After all, if you aren’t, why spend the money?
Above all, be consistent and don’t give up. Some producers let their routine diagnostics protocols fall by the wayside when they get to be too expensive, too complicated or too difficult to do and follow up on. The goal, though — the “meat and potatoes” of a testing program — is to get the results, analyze them and then do something that will benefit your herd, and you. It’s okay to make changes; just don’t abandon the program. And remember, as you develop one, it’s important to build in routines to review the diagnostics and contemplate what your next steps will be.
Your Next Read: Purposeful Purchases: How to Decide Which Technology to Invest in Next
