Better Pork - December 2006

Herd Health

What your pigs’ water consumption can tell you about their health

A sharp fall in your pigs’ water consumption may be an early warning sign of disease and allow you to get a head start on treatment

by S. ERNEST SANFORD

In recent months, some very enlightening information has been emerging from studies on water consumption by pigs. In this article, I’ll present three sets of new findings that have emerged recently.

1. Water consumption as a predictor of a disease outbreak

Dr. Mike Brumm, extension swine specialist at the University of Nebraska, has been working and lecturing on monitoring daily water disappearance as a predictor of health of the population. Materials needed to accomplish this are a water meter installed in the water drinking line and a display of recorded readings in a graphic form.

One caution: the water meter must exclude measurements of water used for summer cooling and water used for washing or cleaning of barns.

All-in/all-out nursery and finisher barns are best suited for running these measurements, but measurements could also be done on continuous flow operations if adequate separation of the metered water lines can be accomplished, so that defined groups or populations can be monitored separately.

What Dr. Brumm discovered after monitoring different finishing barns was that, in the face of a disease outbreak (swine influenza is the typical disease outbreak exemplified), water consumption dropped precipitously at least two to three days before definitive clinical signs were exhibited by the pigs (for example, they stopped eating). Pigs can also be tested and diagnosed earlier, and therefore be treated earlier, if treatment were targeted on the drop of water consumption rather than on observation of overt clinical signs where the early clinical signs might be missed.

Although water meters are increasingly present in many barns, Dr. Brumm notes that few farms or producers have methods of displaying daily totals in a graphic form. Once records are displayed graphically, caregivers (owners, contract growers or employees) can readily visualize changes in water disappearance.
Dr. Brumm’s group has developed a spreadsheet from which barn sheets can be created that display water disappearance in a graphic format.

The spreadsheet is available for free download at http://porkcentral.unl.edu

Producers charting daily water disappearance should pay close attention to pig health and behaviour whenever water disappearance decreases for three consecutive days, or if there is a 30-40 per cent decline in water disappearance from one day to the next. These are only starting point guidelines. It is expected that as producers gain more experience over time, new patterns will emerge as critical predictors of pig performance and health.

2. Seasonal differences in water consumption.

Dr, Brumm is also the source of the next revelation about water consumption. In studies conducted on seasonality of water usage by finishing pigs, he quickly observed that there is a distinct difference in when pigs drink (and eat) during winter and summer.

Dr. Brumm’s research team recorded patterns of water consumption of wean-finish pigs in commercial facilities over a seven-day period, four and a half to five months after weaning. Their observations were that in summer, when temperatures were more than 26 C for one or more hours, peak water use was at 9 a.m. (8-9 a.m. time slot), with a second peak at 5-8 p.m.

During winter months and whenever temperatures were less than 26 C, water use does not have this biphasic pattern. Instead it increases gradually, starting in the early morning and peaking at 2 p.m. Two Web sites available for data collection on these and other related topics are www.dicamusa.com and www.herdstar.com.

The pigs made this shift in water consumption pattern on the first day of temperatures above 26-27 C and then maintained the pattern for three to five days, even if temperatures returned to more thermo-neutral levels. So the pigs seemed to adapt to pending periods of heat stress for several days even if the temperatures returned to non-heat stress levels.

3. Drinking behaviours of nursery pigs

At the 2006 International Pig Veterinary Society Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark, July 16-19, 2006, Anna Johnson and her colleagues reported on their study on the drinking behaviour of nursery pigs.
They set up a video camera above the single nipple-cup bowl drinker located in each of two pens and observed and timed drinking bouts of each of the 25 pigs, seven weeks old, in each pen. Each pig was identified by an individual number placed on their back between their shoulder blades. Cameras recorded drinking behaviour of each pig continuously over a three-day period.

A pig was recorded as drinking when it spent more than five seconds at the bowl. The percentage of pigs in a pen that drank from the drinker after two, four and six hours, respectively, was determined for each of four starting points (7 a.m., 8 a.m., 9 and 10 a.m.)

Results of the study showed that, regardless of the starting point, the percentage of pigs that drank from the drinker for the various time periods was:

• 81-98 per cent of pigs had a full drink over a two-hour period;
• 94-100 per cent of pigs had a full drink in a four-hour period;
• 100 per cent of pigs always had a full drink over a six-hour period.

These recent studies provide us with a clearer understanding of the drinking behaviours of pigs during disease outbreaks and under different seasonal, environmental and social conditions. They also allow us to adjust our perceptions of what the pig’s water needs are under varying conditions and adapt accordingly. One example of this is that the time for orally-delivered vaccines is being expanded to six hours from the current four-hour window to ensure that all pigs in a population receive an adequate dose.

What are the take-home messages from this? One is that a drop in water consumption could signal a disease outbreak in a barn. If water consumption is being monitored, it might allow caretakers to respond earlier to a pending disease outbreak or at least allow them to observe their pigs more carefully for early clinical signs of an outbreak.

In summer, pigs have a biphasic water consumption pattern. They drink early in the morning, peaking at between 8 and 9 a.m., and then have a second, smaller, broader peak between 5 and 8 p.m. In winter, water use increases gradually, peaking at 2 p.m.

Over a given time period, it takes up to six hours for 100 per cent of nursery pigs in a pen to visit the water bowl and have a full drink of water. The ramifications for water delivered medications and vaccines are that recommendations should be extended to a six-hour window to ensure that all pigs in the population receive the medication or vaccine. BP

S. Ernest Sanford, DVM, Dip. Path., Diplomate ACVP, is a swine specialist with Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (Canada) in Burlington. Email:
esanford@bur.boehringer-ingelheim.com

Legend for Figure 1. (see page 45 - Better Pork December Issue)

Figure 1. Patterns of drinking water use in pork production facilities (Brumm, M.C., 2006, Nebraska Swine Report EC 06-219, University of Nebraska, Lincoln).