The last year has been a challenge from a health perspective for many Midwestern swine producers. This has been multifactorial from sow farm disease breaks, lateral porcine reproductive and respiratory breaks in grow finish with severe intensity and some old diseases making a comeback such as Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae.

A review of Metafarms Quarter 4 Production Index showed a fourth straight quarter of rising mortality along with some of the highest mortality rates in almost 10 years. Add to this, a rising cost to feed these pigs and each dead pig becomes a very expensive loss.

This has pig farmers asking veterinarians and other producers what more they can do to reverse this frustrating trend and start to lower mortality. For those receiving weaned pigs, one of the first questions to ask is "Are my sow farms in a good location, do the farms have good biosecurity practices and able to wean health stable pigs?" These are very large capital investments and take some time to make major changes. However, most grow finish sites have several points of opportunity to improve biosecurity quickly.

Newly built sow farms we see today are designed with biosecurity in mind. These farms are built with air-filtration, dedicated mortality removal rooms, biosecure supply entry rooms, dedicated trucks and washes, composting, pressurized loadouts and a feed mitigant.

Not all of these make sense in today's world for grow-finish but there is clearly a large opportunity for improvement, and many of these improvements can increase your site biosecurity quickly. Feeding pigs with a competitive corn basis and multiple close market access points has worked out well for many systems but doesn't come without pig density in numerous situations.

Yeah, that sounds great, but where do I start?

Capital improvement of nursery-finishing sites will be a challenge in 2022 with the lack of building supplies and materials cost. This is the perfect opportunity to think about less expensive investments that can make a huge difference to your operation. Rather than building a new site, discuss adding showers, secure entry point and compost to existing sites. In many operations, there are chore people going to multiple sites in a day, so a shower alleviates some of the risk in case one site breaks with a disease before you realize the correct order to go in.

Rendering is still one of the largest biosecurity risks in our industry when not done properly. Adding a compost or incinerator on site can mitigate this risk. Even some of the simple steps like bench entry or separate outside boots can reduce risk significantly.  Every system is very different so you will need to do some self-reflection of your health status of sow herds, system design and ability to execute on improvements.

Math behind return:

Notes:
PRRSv isn't just transmitted via contact (aerosol transmission is still a risk).

Biosecurity protocols must be executed daily and followed by all visitors.

This math always looks simple in the rearview mirror, and we don't always know what caused the disease break. However, most producers agree that grow-finish biosecurity is a large area for opportunity with a chance for a good return on investment. 

Source: Ryan Strobel, Swine Vet Center, who is solely responsible for the information provided, and wholly own the information. Informa Business Media and all its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.