Better Pork - June 2003AUSTRALIA: Power from pigs wins kudos from politicians
by NORMAN DUNN
Australian Pork Ltd (APL), the farmer-financed representative body for the Australian hog production and pork marketing industry, has just been awarded the equivalent of $125,000 Cdn in government grants to test for the best ways of producing energy from pig manure. The organization, which represents 2,500 producers with a total sow herd of just under 300,000 animals, has already run small-scale pilot projects in various states and it appears that the favourite energy-winning technique is biogas (methane) production through fermentation of manure.Farm plants are now going to be tested countrywide, with the resultant gas either burned directly for heat or used for fuelling electricity generators.
APL's initiative is being applauded by politicians in a country where one-fifth of all so-called greenhouse gases are produced by agriculture. Warren Truss, the Australian Minister of Agriculture, sees the move as not only a step towards environmental improvement by the farming industry, but also an important step towards increasing earning ability on hog units.
The Australian pork industry has already established itself as one of the world's fastest-changing farming sectors. Just 40 years ago there were over 50,000 pig farmers registered on the sub-continent and the average sow herd was reckoned at 4.3. Nowadays the average pork producer runs a herd of 121 sows. BP
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When should you breed a sow?
Some trends in breeding barn decisions may explain lower than acceptable performance. One solution is to check sows for heat, beginning the second day after weaningby CATE DEWEY
Most sows in Ontario are now being bred by artificial insemination. The breeding barn manager, rather than the boar, is making the decision about when to breed the sow.The timing of the breeding is essential if we are to maximize farrowing rate, litter size and litters per sow per year. Yet I have noticed some trends in breeding barn decisions which worry me and which may explain some of the lower than acceptable breeding barn performance in our industry.
# 1 Waiting until four days after weaning to look for sows in heat.
# 2 Automatically breeding sows at five and six days after weaning.
How did these trends come about? With the introduction of early weaning, the weaning to breeding intervals increased. When sows were weaned at 10-14 days, they may have come into heat five to six days after weaning. But most producers have increased weaning age. Therefore, I expect sows are coming into heat earlier.
As for trend number 2, I think it occurred because we know that sows returning to heat soon after weaning spend a long time in heat. We also know that ovulation occurs about 30 hours before the end of estrus. If we balance these two facts, many sows will be ovulating five or six days after weaning.
Instead of the current program, I recommend moving weaned sows into a brightly-lit room. Begin testing the weaned sows for estrus behaviour the second day after you wean them. If you examine sows once a day, breed when they come into heat and every 24 hours while they are still in heat.
Your reproductive herd performance will benefit from beginning to look for estrus behaviour early after weaning. This is because sows that come into estrus the earliest will have the best reproductive performance. If you wait until day five or six, you may have missed the sows with the highest farrowing rate and litter size. These sows are the ones that boost the herd's performance.
Also, if you breed a sow too late during estrus, you reduce the litter size because eggs that have already ovulated will not be fertilized. You will also increase the chance of causing vaginal infections, which will reduce the farrowing rate.
Research demonstrates that sows returning to heat soon after weaning have the best reproductive performance. The following table shows how many sows in a group of 1,000 are expected to be in heat at each day after weaning. The last column shows the expected total number of pigs born per litter for group of sows by day after weaning.
Weaning to breeding
intervalNumber of sows
in heatExpected total number
of pigs born1 3 10.9 2 5 11.5 3 30 11.9 4 280 11.8 5 420 11.4 6 160 10.9 7 60 10.6 8 226 10.5 9 16 10.2 As you can see, the highest number of sows return to heat five days after weaning. But if we wait until day five, we will have missed breeding 318 sows.
More importantly, the sows that return on days two, three and four have the best performance. From the table, you can see that they have the highest litter size. They will also have a farrowing rate that is 10 per cent higher than sows bred at seven to nine days after weaning. If we don't breed these sows correctly, we are not taking advantage of their naturally superior production. Notice that sows returning on days seven to nine have the worst performance.
I recommend that sows be exposed to a boar for at least 10 minutes each day, beginning the day after they are weaned. Although this process is time consuming, it will pay off in higher reproductive performance, both in farrowing rate and litter size.
What happens in herds that "blanket breed" all sows at five to six days after weaning? The sows that came into heat on days two to three will likely not conceive or will have very small litters. In these sows, the sperm was not in the reproductive tract when the sow ovulated. The sows that came into heat on day four will likely conceive, but will have lower litter size than if they were bred four days after weaning.
The answer to the question, when should you breed a sow is "When she is in good standing heat." One solution to lower than acceptable breeding herd performance is to check sows for heat, beginning the second day after weaning. BP
Cate Dewey is a professor in the Department of Population Medicine, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph.© copyright 2003 AgMedia Inc..
back Expect trade patterns to change if COOL is implemented
Many questions remain unanswered about the possible impact of country-of-origin labelling in the United States. But clearly COOL does constitute a trade barrier with potentially large costs and consequences
by Ken McEwen
The 2002 U.S. Farm Bill contains a provision that would require mandatory country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for many agricultural commodities beginning in October 2004. This provision includes live swine and meat from swine originating in non-U.S. regions.Recent guidelines published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a voluntary COOL program will form the basis of the mandatory program. The legislation will essentially require that meat labelled "Product of the United States" originate from an animal that has been born, raised and slaughtered in that country. This implies that meat from live pigs imported into the United States from Canada would have to be labelled "Product of Canada."
When the program becomes mandatory, all retailers as defined in the law will have to comply or face fines. Records will have to be maintained from birth to retail to verify that products are properly labeled. There is an exemption for the food service sector.
At present, Ontario produces about 142,500 pigs per week from a sow inventory of approximately 370,000. Of this number, 102,000 are processed within Canada, 32,000 are exported as weaner pigs and another 8,500 are shipped to the United States for slaughter as market hogs.
In 2001, Canada depended on the U.S. market for 35 per cent of the pigs born in Canada. More than 20 per cent were exported as live animals, while the other 10 per cent were exported as pork. Cross-border exports of live pig are the equivalent of 25.7 per cent of the Canadian hog slaughter and represent 5.4 per cent of U.S. hog slaughter.
COOL is definitely a trade barrier and carries potentially large costs and consequences. The costs include those associated with identity preservation, labeling, traceability and record keeping. Some of the consequences could be loss of the U.S. market for live animal exports and the use of the U.S. market to formulate live hog pricing.
The additional costs could mean that it becomes too expensive to export many commodities into the United States, while maintaining compliance with the requirements of COOL. The landed price of exported product may well exceed the U.S. price. Consequently, trade patterns that have emerged under liberalized trade relations may be altered.
Many questions remain unanswered. Will U.S. meat manufacturers still want Canadian pork? Will U.S. packers still take Canadian pigs but only on a limited basis, such as specific days or shifts? Will the cost of compliance make the U.S. industry less competitive than the Canadian industry?
Despite one's take on who will gain and lose because of COOL, it is undisputable that COOL will change current trading patterns if it is implemented.
BP
TABLE 1. TRENDS IN ONTARIO PIG NUMBERS AND PORK PRODUCTION Ontario 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2002
% of totalPigs Processed in Ontario 3,358,026.0 4,157,888.0 4,039,243.0 4,256,837.0 4,620.615.0 64.85% Pigs Processed in Other Province 671,734.0
Ken McEwan is an economics professor at Ridgetown College, University of Guelph, Ridgetown.
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back Will the Minimum Distance formulae encourage more tolerance of large operations?
The MDS standards are based on the assumption that, over time, neighbours will become more tolerant of livestock operations. But will this be the case if odours are frequent and new to the neighbourhood?
by MURRAY BLACKIE
Forgive my penchant for history, but as I wait patiently with all of you to see what the Bill 81 regulations will finally look like, I would like to muse on a topic dear to my heart -- the smell of manure, especially liquid manure. Or as a pork producer friend of mine once called it, "the smell of money."Land use conflict from manure odours was a "big deal" back in the late 1960s and '70s. It was a big enough deal that the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture (OMAF) and the Air Resources Branch of the Ministry of Health developed the first Agricultural Code of Practice in an attempt to address adequate separation distances to help avoid odour problems. It prescribed that a new or expanding livestock operation should locate 1,000 feet from the nearest neighbour, 300 feet from the centre of the road and 200 feet from the nearest lot line. Unfortunately, this applied to all operations, whether with 1,000 market hogs or two horses.
To address this obvious inequity, a revised Code and set of Minimum Distance Separation (MDS) formulae were developed. These formulae took into account the type of livestock (assuming that some forms, such as market hogs, cause more odour problems than others), the size of the operation (Animal Units), the type of manure system and the amount of expansion taking place or whether the operation was new to the community. The last factor is the one which may now represent some real evolutionary differences in its ability to assess the level of short-term and long-term tolerance a neighbourhood is likely to show.
In a more recent version of the MDS formulae and associated tables, Animal Unit has become Livestock Unit and the resulting separation distances have become somewhat more restrictive for some livestock forms, such as swine, in an attempt to address the trend toward larger operations. Although the original formulae had been based largely on in-field experience, there had not been many large operations in Ontario and the original formulae did not seem realistic for very small or very large operations.
Although the formulae have had their detractors, maintaining the MDS separation distances indicated does seem to help in reducing the likelihood of odour complaints.
But times change and livestock operations have also changed. I mentioned the concept of tolerance earlier. Tolerance in this context refers to the acceptance of an occasionally odorous livestock operation next door. If there are only infrequent odours -- such as twice a year for a short period at manure spreading time -- and manure storage is covered, one could expect that neighbors would accept this short-term nuisance. If odour is frequent -- as in the case of a large surface area, open manure storage or long barn with many ventilation fans -- is it reasonable to assume neighbors may not be as accepting? If the farmer does not live at the operation because it is not his only operation, is it reasonable to assume the neighbors may be worried that the operator will be more cavalier in his approach to frequent odours?
In fact, it is unfair to assume that an operator will care less about his neighbours if he does not live there. It is reasonable to assume that if his operation meets the MDS formulae, then neighbors should experience minimum odour nuisance. The factor in the MDS formulae is based on an assumption that, over a reasonable period of time, neighbourhood tolerance and acceptance will develop.
I believe that times have changed, operational reality has changed and that we should support constant refining of the MDS formulae and the assumptions behind them. They may or may not be able to meet the scrutiny of air pollution dispersion modelers under all conditions, but they have generally seemed to work.
In subsequent articles, I will discuss some specific issues plaguing the livestock industry in their ongoing efforts to manage manure in an environmentally acceptable manner. BP
Murray Blackie is the former agricultural specialist with the Ministry of the Environment and is now a consultant, expert witness and writer on agro-environmental issues.
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Telling the story of pork - where public relations and science meet
by LEE WHITTINGTONHave you ever wanted to go exploring in a pig barn? Maybe that can be a commonplace feeling for readers of this magazine, but for people outside our industry, the opportunity seldom arises. If you have attended a hearing for a concentrated livestock unit recently anywhere in Canada or the United States, you have an appreciation for the types of questions that arise. These concerns could have many origins, but they can be summed up perhaps as "fear of the unknown."
When the Prairie Swine Centre sought industry input for a proposed new research facility in 1998, the idea of allowing the public to view inside the barn came to the fore as a significant and unique function the facility could provide in addition to its research mandate.
Fast forward to 2003 and the Pork Industry Interpretive Centre and Sask Pork Viewing Gallery is nearly complete. Many people have helped to get the facility to this point including 90 donors who have contributed more than $900,000 toward the construction, display development and operation of the facility and a Development Committee with pork producer and association members from Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. The end product has an inviting and fun look as it delivers the experience the pigs undergo" together with a series of messages about how pork is produced.
The Interpretive Centre uses the science and social studies of everyday life in a pig barn to capture the visitor's attention and separate fact from myth. By taking advantage of the large amount of space in the attic of the barn, the facility has created a "gallery" with a bird's eye view of the pigs. Playful weanlings stop their scraping long enough to look up, seeming to ask you to "look at me" before going about their normal behaviour of sleeping, shoving, pushing and running around.
The experience of watching pigs is expected to be the highlight for the visitors to the Centre. School groups (primarily grades 6-10), young adults seeking careers in agriculture, municipal councils, regulatory authorities, investors and prospective neighbours in a community near a planned barn are among the main groups the Centre hopes to attract.
A trained tour guide will accompany each visit will be accompanied to assist the group in understanding how the typical hog barn operates and how the sciences of chemistry, physics, biology, and animal behaviour help us to operate the barn and deal with the larger social issues being discussed in the industry.
The signage supplements the tour, describing what it is the visitor sees inside and outside the barn. One example: at the top of the stairs, the first window looks out onto the earthen manure storage (EMS). The sign has three messages. First, to make the point that manure is a valuable source of plant nutrients, the sign states "manure is worth saving" and explains why we store it. Secondly, to emphasize that an EMS is safe storage, it notes that it is "not just a hole in the ground" but an engineered structure. Thirdly, it demonstrates the proactive approach to odour control being used on many farms, showing photos of both straw and permanent covers.
To help visitors enjoy their visit, a number of interactive displays have been included. The first is a biosecurity shower, where visitors can get the message of the importance of biosecurity without getting wet -- well maybe just a little wet!
How many kids does it take to equal the weight of a sow? At the "How Big Is A Pig" display, you can get all your friends on the hydraulic scale. As the needle rolls to the right on the dial face, it passes over the key weight categories of weanling, grower pig, finishing pig and sow. A display to the left discusses the biology of growth and there are life-size, two-dimensional cutouts of pigs at various sizes for comparison.
The facility will open in June and offers a great opportunity for those outside our industry to get good information and a positive experience about the production of pork. BP
Lee Whittington is manager of information services, Prairie Swine Centre, Saskatoon.
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Ron MacDonald P. Eng., is an agricultural engineer with Agviro Inc. in Guelph.
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