Sarah Mikesell, editor of The Pig Site and in collaboration with LifeStart Swine, interviews Dr. Ruben Decaluwe, the Global Technical Manager of Swine Young Animal Feed at Trouw Nutrition. Dr. Decaluwe is based in Belgium. Prior to working with Trouw Nutrition, his PhD research was focused on colostrum production.
A key to short-term production gains come from three pillars - optimizing farm management which a farmer can do on his own, optimizing swine health management by working together with a veterinarian and changing feed management by working with a nutritionist.
“Those three factors aren’t all that matter on the farm – things like genetics, housing and environment are also very important but it's more difficult to have a short-term impact in these areas,” said Dr. Ruben Decaluwe, Global Technical Manager of Swine Young Animal Feed at Trouw Nutrition. “However, a real immediate impact can be seen with farm, health and feed management. There's a lot of overlap and interaction between these three areas, but they can serve as a foundation to structure your preventative and curative actions for specific weaning events.”
The immunity gap - is a good example to illustrate how to use farm, health and feed management to lower pathogen load while increasing resiliency in piglets. An immunity gap occurs between three to eight weeks of age when the piglet is immune compromised and highly susceptible to disease pressure. The piglet receives some passive immunity from the sow, but that benefit is transient and subsides quickly, leaving the piglet exposed before their active immunity develops. Weaning usually occurs as the height of the immunity gap. Thus, when piglets are in an immunologically weak position, they are moved to an environment with high infection pressures. There is a balance between the protection that is available to the piglet and the potential attacks that could be coming from pathogens.
“Keeping infection pressure low is critical at this time,” he said. “We should have a very clean environment that can also increase the resilience of weaned piglets so that they're better able to cope with the challenges coming their way. A farmer can help improve the odds with farm management, health management and feed management.”
Farm management
Keep infection pressure low by implementing tight biosecurity measures.
• Make sure boots are cleaned. If you've entered the barn, don't enter a pen full of diarrhea, then leave the pen and entered the next pen without cleaning your boots.
• Consider how piglets are mixed. Do you use a sorting technique that compiles some litters from the farrowing house into the nursery, mixing only two or three litters? Or do you mix all litters together? Piglets have different immune status coming from different sows, so the more you mix, the higher the chance that you’ll encounter problems.
• Create a triage and separation strategy for sick pigs. If a pig gets sick, it should be separated from its pen mates into its own pen. If you continue to treat the sick piglet in the original pen, the pathogen will likely spread quickly across the pen.
Increase resiliency in piglets.
• Consider a later weaning date for piglets.
• Colostrum management is very important to monitor. The higher the colostrum intake and availability/yield of the colostrum, the shorter the immunity gap.
Health management
Keep infection pressure low.
• Work with your veterinarian on triage and separation techniques.
• Target treatments. If an animal gets sick, separate it and treat the animal for the right pathogen; do not just administer antibiotics but treat correctly based on diagnostic testing and monitoring.
• A vaccination management program is important to define, implement and monitor for efficacy.
Increase resiliency in piglets.
• Colostrum management is critical for not only yield and the intake, but colostrum quality also impacts the level of passive immunity and how much antibodies are being provided to the piglets via the colostrum. This can also be managed and steered by vaccination protocols in sows.
Feed management
Keep infection pressure low in feeds.
• Make sure there's no microbiological loads, molds or mycotoxins in the feed.
• Help piglets in their digestive physiology. It is still maturing and developing but it’s underdeveloped. There are some specific known physiological challenges that feed can minimize the challenges while accelerating the maturation process of the physiological processes.
• Feed additives offer extra support to prevent pathogen excretion. Keeping an animal healthy through feed decreases the excretion of pathogens, and the overall infection pressure in the barn will be lower.
Increase resiliency in piglets.
• Teach piglets how to eat. Introduce baby piglets to dry creep feed early in the nursery so they know that its food and how to eat it. Their intake will be minimal, but it will help train the digestive system to accept it. It will also help to mature the digestive system, making piglets more robust at weaning.
• Provide easy access to feed and water at weaning. Make sure there are feeder spaces for every pig. Pigs will quickly establish a social hierarchy. Those at the top of the hierarchy will do it by controlling the feeding places, usually by laying in front of the feeder. Plenty of feeders can help reduce that stressor and keep pigs eating.
“There’s a lot that can be done to keep the infection pressure low and increase the resilience by a farmer along with support from a veterinarian and nutritionist,” said Decaluwe. “Because once things start going wrong, there's often not much that a farmer can do except damage control – separate and treat animals and hope for the best. A preventative holistic approach is truly essential to manage the herd and farm, health and feed management can play a key role.”
