Disease doesn’t discriminate seasons. As summer approaches and temperatures rise, so does the importance of preparing for the heat wave ahead. Carthage System’s Chief Operating Officer Shaun McGinn, who oversees day-to-day management of Professional Swine Management (PSM) farms, offers some key points to keep your operation running smoothly during the hot summer months.
Maintenance reminders
Top priorities on PSM’s farms’ summer-prep checklist include checking generators for repairs and preventive maintenance; inspecting outdoor watering systems and preparing them to turn back on after a long winter shutoff; and making sure the barn cool cells are ready to deploy, McGinn says. These cells are especially important in keeping the barns cool and, in fact, may make a difference of as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit on a steaming summer day.
Part of your preparation should be to make sure those are up and running before they’re needed. This means replacing any broken water lines from the winter, as well as other worn parts, and running disinfectant or algaecide through the cells to ensure cleanliness and longevity. Also, check there are no holes in the pads and do a test run of the cool cells.
Ventilation and fan upkeep
Another tool for beating heat stress in the summer is checking your facility’s fans and ventilation system for needed replacements and repairs. We know pigs can’t sweat to cool off, so using misters and dippers helps simulate that process by coating them in cool water that evaporates to take some heat off their skin. Smooth-running ventilation and fans provide that cross breeze that dries the animals more quickly.
McGinn says their farms, and even the Illinois headquarters, stay stocked up on fan motors and blades to ensure speedy repairs in case of storms, tornadoes or simple equipment failure.
Pigs in hot temperatures
And, of course, Pig Care 101 tells us to make available plenty of cool water for every animal in these upcoming hotter months. You should monitor your pigs’ respiration when it’s particularly hot or humid — if you notice their panting is becoming too labored or, worse, stopping in high temperatures, take immediate action to better cool them off.
This has impacts on transport of animals in the summer, as well. Since the goal is to deliver healthy pigs with no mortalities, it’s important to minimize the heat to which they are subjected when riding in a semi trailer:
● Try to load the truck during cooler parts of the day when the forecast is hot and humid, beginning earlier in the morning or waiting until evening (if driving overnight)
● Speaking of overnight, if it’s possible to transport during these hours, it does remove direct sunlight as your main element of exacerbating the heat
● Wet down bedding or shavings inside the trailer to help cool the environment
● Pigs should not be sprayed directly with cold water when heat-stressed. This will cause a shock to the pig’s system and can result in death
● Drivers should be instructed to keep the truck moving as much as possible until the pigs are unloaded — if they cannot unload immediately at their destination, drive around the block or down the road and back until they can, since a still trailer with no breeze or airflow is a hot trailer
● This also applies to the drive itself — ask your driver to plan routes that take them around construction and metro-area traffic jams as much as possible (again, driving at night may help with some of this, on top of cooler temperatures)
We once put a data logger in a trailer that was moving in minus-20-degree weather a few years ago, and what we noticed is the interior got up to 20 degrees over zero from the truck being in direct sunlight. While 20 degrees isn’t warm at all in the winter, the point is to think about what a 40-degree difference means in the summer to a trailer full of pigs.
Even more heat considerations
Pig production depends on the animals consuming enough well-formulated feed to hit their growth and gain targets and to sustain them through times of higher stress. But just as you or I are likely to not be as hungry when we get hot and sweaty, the same applies to pigs in the heat of a June afternoon.
For that reason, it’s important to gently push where necessary — for instance, making each animal get up and walk around to exercise and stimulate appetite — and to make sure the feed is available later in the day and overnight, when they are more likely to eat.
Our farms make dietary formulation changes for pigs in the summer, as well. While there’s little alteration in the gestation diet for sows, we increase energy and lysine components in lactation diets around the first of May to ensure every sow that will be farrowing has the nutrition to handle such stressful activity — and because, like other pigs, they tend to consume less feed as it gets hotter. For the same reason, we also boost the energy in nursery and grow-finish diets in the summer.
“Summertime is our most important time of year, as it is when pigs are worth the most,” McGinn added. “Pig prices tend to go up in June and fall off in the autumn. We take preparing our facilities and sows in advance seriously, from barn and grounds care to plotting our feed formulations and bin maintenance, in order to supply feed at peak eating times in sufficient quantities and with the right nutritional energy.”
Don’t forget people
It’s also wise for producers to watch out for the humans on the farm in hot weather. McGinn notes one of the simplest things PSM farms do is make cold drinks available to workers at all times.
The safety team also monitors weather and temperature forecasts and sends out reminders on the most hot or humid days for how to beat the heat, and allows flex-hours so people can instead work earlier to load trucks or later at night to sprinkle water over sows (which is all right to do in cooler conditions than a hot trailer or direct sunlight), for example.
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