"Diseases in Manitoba: An Update" was among the topics discussed last week as part of the 2012 Manitoba Swine Seminar.

Dr Blaine Tully, a partner with Steinbach-based Swine Health Professionals, reports the health status of the Manitoba swine herd has been fairly stable but he acknowledges health is always relative and over time health changes between farms but also in regions.

Dr Blaine Tully-Swine Health Professionals

Biosecurity has always been a focus on swine farms and continues to be.

For that reason I think Manitoba has enjoyed a somewhat stable health.

We've heard some pretty dramatic health challenges with PRRS virus in other parts of Canada and the mid-west US over this past winter and we haven't really seen those same challenges in Manitoba fortunately.

Having said that, PRRS is always top of mind and farms that struggle with PRRS circulation continue to be challenged with performance-related health issues.

Farms that don't have PRRS in their pigs continue to be focused on keeping it out of the farm.

Besides PRRS virus we continue to see challenge and control strategies evolving for circovirus disease and we have several good tools in vaccines at our fingertips and as time goes on we learn more and more on how some of those tools can be applied on farm to best optimize control strategies.

Dr Tully predicts we'll see more use of technology to identify specific disease challenges, stepped up surveillance to track pathogen movement in regions and further development of control strategies.

He suggests, for example, new tools that allow scientists to identify and compare different strains of PRRS will to be critical in understanding not only disease transmission but control strategies as well.

Further Reading

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Find out more information on pig diseases by clicking here.