Better Pork - October 2005
Sexy boar sounds on CD a bit hit with European producers
The recorded grunts and snorts help identify sows in heat and also encourage teaser boar activities in the barnby NORMAN DUNN
The grunts and snorts of a sexually aroused boar in the serving barn have been recorded on CD by an enterprising AI station at Noord Brabant in the Netherlands and the disc is now selling in the thousands to Dutch, German, French and Spanish hog producers.The reason: played back in the serving centre, the sexy boar sounds cause an immediate reaction from sows coming into heat, so making them easy for the stockperson to identify. Teaser boars in the centre also react to the grunts and seem to be stimulated to intensify their activities, according to farmers who use the CD, which has now become an important part of the servicing routine in many herds.
By July 2005, sales of the CD, priced at the equivalent of around $13.60 Cdn, have topped 600 in Germany and over 700 in the Netherlands with many more selling in neighbouring countries reckons Peter Loenen, manager with Topigs, the international pig breeding concern which is now marketing the CD internationally. "We are also sure that there are many illegal copies now circulating."
The recommended routine involves playing the CD in the servicing centre twice a day, each time for around 10 minutes. A survey of farmers using the CD shows that 80 per cent of sows in heat immediately stand up and prick their ears and then adopt the typical stance of a sow ready for serving. The hog breeders also report that, when the CD is played while the sow is being served by AI, the animal takes in the semen much more rapidly.
No results have yet been recorded showing an effect on piglet numbers born, but commercial farmers say returns to service have been reduced after the CD has been introduced into the mating routine. Most report a return to service average sinking to between 7 and 10 per cent. Average return to service figure for commercial herds in Germany and the Netherlands is estimated at between 13 and 15 per cent. BP
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Sale and leaseback deals help Dutch farmers modernize their hog units
by Norman Dunn
Increasing demands for more animal welfare and higher hygiene standards in Dutch hog production units mean many farmers are being forced to rebuild their barns if they want to stay in business. With larger units of 300, 400 or more sows, renovation is often so expensive that profits for following years can easily be wiped out by the repayments
. Now, two of the country's largest financial institutions, Rabobank and IG-bank, have stepped in with a solution for hard-pressed hog farmers. These banks offer to buy approved hog production units from farmers and then lease them back. The units have first to be completely modernized, but the sale price compensates farmers for this expenditure. The leasing contract is usually for 12 years, but can be longer if desired, and the farmer has the right to buy back his unit at the end of the period. The repurchase price is determined in the contract.
Maintenance and upkeep of the buildings are paid by the banks during the leasing period and an added bonus is that the banks also pass on to the farmers any special grants given by the government during the leasing period -- for instance, for increased animal welfare in the new buildings. In the Netherlands, such grants can represent up to 10 per cent of total investment.
Currently, the banks are only offering deals for units of $5 million Cdn and up, but a concept for smaller hog production enterprises is planned. BP
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Keeping a night watch in the farrowing department pays off in Germany
by NORMAN DUNN
Bigger litters and increased attention to piglet survival at birth have renewed interest in regular night check-ups on farrowing sows in Germany. During the 2003/04 financial year, advisers there reckoned that every extra piglet saved meant an increase in gross income per sow equivalent to around $60 Cdn, this being the average price for a 25-kilogram young hog in that period. The piglet survival bonus can be much more. For instance, in March this year the average price for a 25-kilogram animal was $96 Cdn. Research by the Chamber of Agriculture in Westphalia shows that a nightwatch person need only save seven piglets per night to pay for an eight-hour shift at an average wage of $24 Cdn per hour. As most farms now synchronize breeding cycles so that farrowings are over one or two days in the week, there's no need for a full-time nightwatch person.
Comparisons on units that have recently started such a system indicate definite advantages. For example, the ten Broek family's 120-sow swine unit was reported in the specialist Schweinezucht und Schweinemast magazine as cutting piglet losses by two per cent after introducing a nightwatch. On this farm, group farrowing is practiced with farrowing on one to two days every three weeks. A nightwatch person in this case checks farrowing sows every two hours from 10 pm to 6 am. Over three nights, six hours are spent in the farrowing house by the nightwatch person at a wage of $32 Cdn an hour The main task is to help with farrowing, where necessary, and to make sure each piglet is either placed at a nipple or put into the warm creep after birth. The family reckons this service is easily paid for by the improvement in piglet survival, with 24.2 weaned piglets per sow per year now being produced.
In the much bigger hog production units in the east of Germany, full-time night shifts in the farrowing house are more traditional. A typical farm near Berlin with 5,500 breeding sows synchronized to give more than 250 farrowings over three days each week runs a shift from 8 pm to 7 am during the intervening nights for a specialised farrowing helper. The night shift was started here four years ago after there was a rising incidence of newborn piglets found squashed in the mornings, along with others that had obviously never made it to the sow's udder through the night.
Since the nightwatch was started, weaned piglets per farrowing have increased by 0.2. On a unit this size, this means around 50 piglets per week saved.BP
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Dutch test whether mixing litters can reduce fighting among young hogs
By NORMAN DUNN
The Dutch Swine Centre in Sterksel is testing the voluntary mixing of up to three litters while still suckling, and first results indicate that this concept reduces fighting among the young hogs after weaning.Litter mixing is made possible simply by cutting out small doors in the wall panels separating adjacent farrowing pens. The piglets then move freely from pen to pen, usually returning to their own mother for suckling.
"This is a small experiment at the moment, so we cannot say too much about results," cautions trial co-ordinator Anne-Marie van Bussel. "The target is to investigate whether this approach to premixing can help reduce stress at weaning when pigs from different litters are penned together. Certainly, there seems to be less fighting between the young piglets that have already met and mixed during the suckling period. There's also the possibility of a positive effect on piglet health from the system."
The researchers say it's important to ensure that there are no obvious disease or diarrhea problems among any of the litters that are to be mixed. If the trial results continue to be positive, the system is to be tried out on a larger scale under working farm conditions.BP
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Blue light translates to less biting in German trials
By NORMAN DUNN
Subdued blue lighting in the hog-feeding house has a positive effect on animal behaviour according to trials done by the German Haus Düsse Research Institute. In one 100-head pen, the windows were covered with blue transparent plastic film and the white light neon tubes replaced with blue ones. Conventional lighting was retained in a control pen.Average light intensity in the blue light pens is just 160 LUX compared with 820 LUX in the control compartment, which had the same ventilation, liquid feeding system and pen sizes as the test barn.
The Haus Düsse researchers find that the feeders in the blue light environment are quieter and more relaxed, lying down more than the control animals and moving around much less. The blue light hogs, from the same line of hybrid sows and terminal boars as the control ones, are also quicker to settle down after being moved around. So far, the effect of the relaxing blue light has yet to be translated into any weight gain or feed efficiency advantages by the researchers, but the quietening effect has been proven with successive groups of feeding hogs over several feeding cycles.
There are disadvantages, however. One is that the blue light is just not bright enough for thorough inspections of the feeders and any control must be carried out with additional white lighting. This problem also made itself apparent when it came to cleaning the pens between feeding batches. Here, too, additional lighting equipment has to be brought in for every operation.BP
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More tryptophan helps piglet disease resistance
by NORMAN DUNN
French trials indicate that extra supplementation of the amino acid tryptophan in grower hog rations increases daily liveweight gain by up to 30 grams, even where the animals are under disease stress. Growers were housed in uncleaned and dirty pens with one group receiving extra tryptophan to the level of a 1:5 ratio with lysine. Standard (lower) tryptophan was given to control hogs.
In another trial, piglets were artificially infected with a coughing virus. The tryptophan group regained health much more quickly than the control piglets.
Effect of extra tryptophan in piglet diets (Trial period: six weeks) Piglets (lw 8.5 kg) Dietary tryptophan Daily feed intake Daily liveweight gain 12 0.11% (low) 335g 198g 12 0.20% (high) 645g 458g 12 *Choice of 0.11% and 0.16% 366g 218g 12 **Choice of 0.11% and 0.20% 589g 404g * 87% of piglets chose the higher rate of tryptophan ** 93% of piglets chose the higher rate of tryptophan Trial results: Drs T. Ettle and F.X. Roth, Department of Animal Nutrition, Technical University of Munich.
Over the border in Germany, recent trials back-up the effectiveness of this amino acid when included at higher than standard rate in the rations. At Munich's Technical University, animal nutritionists found that feed consumption could be increased by almost 100 per cent to 645 grams per day with 8.5-kilogram piglets over a six-week period by feeding diets with high tryptophan content (0.20 per cent) instead of rations with low tryptophan levels (0.11 per cent). Daily liveweight gain for the two groups was also markedly different at 458 grams and 198 grams respectively.And it seems that even the piglets knew what was good for them in this trial. Where the animals had to choose between 0.11 per cent and 0.16 per cent dietary tryptophan, 87 per cent nosed into the high level feed. Where the choice was between 0.11 per cent and 0.20 per cent, 93 per cent rushed to the high-tryptophan trough. BP
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Murray Blackie shares some good insights in his article in your August issue ("Is animal welfare becoming a hot button issue?"). There is only a small, but growing, segment of consumers willing to pay more for food with animal welfare attributes. The more important trend might be that animal welfare is evolving beyond an issue into an expectation. The public demands and assumes that farm animals are treated well. They want to eat pork and not feel guilty about it.To date, Canadians have basically decided to trust us and have not demanded additional or burdensome regulations for farm animal treatment. The difficulty lies in the definition of treatment, with a world of difference between a sow in a stall in Listowel and a poodle in a fenced yard in Toronto.
Our group talks with over two million Ontarians each year about animal agriculture. It's up to our industry to keep supporting animal welfare research, so that we can answer their tough questions about what pigs really need versus "how would you like it," emotion-based arguments. And if the research shows we need to change, then attitudes, production practices and barn design all need to evolve, just as they always have.
A word of caution on the imagery around seals. Remember, the same groups that oppose farming are fighting the seal hunt. We know their pictures and messages are not usually accurate about farming, so one might assume the same about the seals.
Crystal Mackay
Executive Director,
Ontario Farm Animal Council
MississaugaWrite to us
We welcome the views of all readers. To be published letters, must be written exclusively to Better Farming and include the writer's name, address and telephone number to allow for verification. Letters may be edited, condensed or rejected. Due to space limitations, we suggest a length of less than 300 words.
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Make a 'manure arm' part of your contingency planning
Including the name of a manure arm owner in your contingency plan doesn't make you duly diligent in itself. But it is a step in that direction
by MURRAY BLACKIE
Effective contingency plans are an integral part of effective environmental planning. Whether in the factory, at the gas station or on the farm and whether a source is stationary or mobile, everyone in control of a hazardous waste or product needs to plan for the worst.I have recently read about "The Arm." This arm is not the one you put on your brother for a $10 loan, it is not the long arm of the law and it is not the Space Arm. It is the "Manure Arm," a hydraulic hose mounted on a vacuum tanker, and it is being touted as a good addition to your manure spill contingency plan. The idea is not necessarily to own one personally but to know a neighbour who has one and to have an arrangement to get help from him if the need arises. A list of owners of the manure arm is available at: http://www.nuhn.ca/spillsubmit.html.
Although having the name of an arm's owner as part of your contingency plan is a good thing, it should be viewed as an option in dealing with clean up and should be part of a larger list of contacts and equipment. And, while access to an arm may serve as substitute for other equipment such as pumps, hoses and a vacuum tanker, the arm may not be available when needed, so you need to have these back-up options available. This equipment is effective at getting into an area such as a farm ditch and recovering the manure collected there and may be preferable to a more conventional vacuum truck. But if an arm is not locally available, a vacuum truck should be within reach.
It has been suggested that a vacuum truck used by a bio-solids, sewage or septic tank hauler could also be a viable alternative. However, there may be difficulties in finding acceptable land disposal of the material collected. Human sewage waste must be taken to approved disposal sites and, if one assumes that a manure spill clean-up may generate a mixed load, the mix will be deemed to be human waste. The combined waste may not be legally disposed of on a farmer's fields without approval.
The mere inclusion of the name of an arm's owner in your contingency plan, of course, does not mean that you are being duly diligent, but it does contribute to an acceptable plan which, if effectively implemented in a timely manner, represents due diligence following an actual spill. Although some people might view a list of arm owners in a sort of spills response network as being a gimmick, we should appreciate its value, if it works. OMAF seems to support the network idea as a necessary component in contingency planning and, with today's rapid electronic communication, I believe it can be useful.
This type of approach has proved successful in the petroleum industry in helping to respond quickly and effectively to spills. Local stakeholders, such as the municipality, farm suppliers, local co-ops, local federations of agriculture and commodity groups can all play a part in seeing that adequate spill contingency plans also exist in the agricultural sector. 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.© copyright 2005 AgMedia Inc..
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